


Defrost

by faeleverte



Series: Out of the Ice [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 30k words of pwp, ALL THE FLUFF, Anal Sex, Fluff, M/M, More Fluff, Non-Penetrative Sex, Oral Sex, PWP, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), comfort without the hurt, feel all the feels, hot showers, maybe tiny bits of plot, one-armed Bucky, references to the awesomeness of Peggy Carter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 13:56:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7389685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has been back since Bucky went under. Steve visits while Bucky is under. Probably slobbers sadly all over the glass of the viewing window and annoys the technicians. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Jesus, Steve. Keep it together.</i></p><p> </p><p>Bucky wakes up to be there for Steve. Turns out, Bucky is the one who finds the most comfort and warmth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defrost

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Steven Grant Rogers and the USA!
> 
> Hope my American readers are having a great Independence Day, and that my non-American readers are have a great 4 Jul in general.

“Rogers is here.” T’Challa barely gives Bucky enough time to get his eyes open before making the announcement. “He needs to see you.”

Groaning as the last of the iciness leaves his fingers, Bucky reaches up to cover his face, startling when only one hand makes contact. He’d barely had time to get used to the metal one while awake and aware, and now he’s gotta to get used to not having one on that side at all. But, like he used to tell Steve in the days when Steve would bemoan all the ailments that kept him from playing with the other kids, sometimes life sucks and all you can do is make the best of it. 

“Barnes?” T’Challa watches him with those piercing dark eyes, like he sees right into Bucky’s head and can’t make sense of the tangle he’s found in there. 

_Welcome to the club, bucko._

“Rogers is–”

“I got that part.” Bucky steps out of the capsule, stretching an imaginary kink out of his neck. “What happened? World blow up again or something? Steve pick a fight with someone bigger’n him?”

T’Challa gives him another of those measuring glances, and something cold lodges in the pit of Bucky’s stomach. Something like a fight, no matter how big the opponent wouldn't phase a man like T'Challa. Must be something worse, something like Steve being hurt, something bad enough that T'Challa doesn't really want to say. Bucky worries more when T’Challa looks away and makes a vaguely uncomfortable half-shrug, half-flinch.

“It is....more personal.” T’Challa turns back and looks at him directly, serious but obviously trying to be gentle. “He has not asked to speak with you, but I believe….I think he needs it. Needs to hear that you are still well. He has been up here to see you three times in the two days that he had been here this time.”

“Has he said anything?” Bucky can already imagine the big, sad, dumb eyes on Steve’s puppy dog face. 

T’Challa shakes his head, and sighs. “Do you remember the rooms he used the last time he was...the last time you were awake?”

Bucky lifts an eyebrow. Steve has been back since Bucky went under. Steve visits while Bucky is under. Probably slobbers sadly all over the glass of the viewing window and annoys the technicians. 

_Jesus, Steve. Keep it together._

He can't get any real edge into the thought, though. Knowing that Steve has been keeping watch fills the out of Bucky's belly with something thick and warm and happy.

T'Challa is still watching him, all bright, curious eyes, waiting for an answer, so Bucky does his best to smile, even though it still feels a little stiff and awkward on his face.

“I’ve got him.” He tries to figure out how to thank T’Challa for looking out for his friend, but there are no words adequate to the task. It’s supposed to be _Bucky’s_ job to look after Steve. Watch his back. Protect both his feelings and his body. Especially since Steve can’t seem to look after either one of those things on his own. _Punk_.

Instead of thanks, he just offers T’Challa a nod and squares his shoulders as he walks toward Steve’s apartment or whatever the hell they call it around here. He laughs as he wonders what the two boys from back in Brooklyn that he and Steve used to be would think if they could see themselves now: guests of a king, staying in a real, honest-to-God palace.

Every inch of the place gleams, reflecting both the old and the new of Wakanda, the technological advances and the ancient beliefs of the people who live there winding together to create a solid whole. Bucky kinda loves it, in spite of how utterly foreign he finds the whole country. Or maybe he loves it _because_ of that unfamiliarity, because he _knows_ he’s never been there. Never committed a crime within the borders. Never spilled blood in the name of an ideal that he remembers trying to question before he understood his doubts. It’s oddly restful to know he doesn’t have any skeletons rattling in any Wakandan closets. At least _here_ he doesn’t have to watch out for the Goddamned Winter Soldier.

He’s grateful that the halls are so bright that the lights seem to devour shadows. Bucky never minded the dark, but he’s still glad to get out of it. He wonders if anyone (Stark’s kid) will ever understand just how afraid of the Soldier Bucky is. He _certainly_ has more reason than anyone (Stark’s kid) to hate the Soldier. Stark’s kid saw the Soldier kill his mom. _Bucky_ saw the Soldier kill his friend Howard and Howard’s lovely wife with Bucky’s own hands. 

_Hey, Stark’s kid, sometimes life sucks, and you just have to make the best of what you_ can _do._

Bucky knocks lightly at the door to Steve’s room: old-fashioned door, with a knob and all, rather than one of the newer, electronic sliding doors common around the lab where Bucky's cryopod is. Steve opens it quickly, and Bucky gets a heart-melting view of Steve looking battered and sad– all puppy-eyed and down-turned lips– and then Steve’s got ahold of him and is hugging his ribs with supersoldier strength.

“I’m not _actually_ indestructable, you know,” Bucky tells him, wheezing slightly. “If you break me, I’ll have to stay awake until I’m healed, or else I’ll wake up with my ribs in pieces, and then what'll you do if there's an emergency?”

“Hey, Buck.” Steve clearly isn’t listening to a word Bucky’s saying, so Bucky quits saying words. He just hugs back, holding on as hard as he can with his one arm and wishing like hell he had a second one to wrap Steve up with. 

Seventy-some years is too damn long to go without hugs, and Steve is so solid and safe and familiar in his arms, in spite of how few hugs there were after Steve got his new body. Some sense greater than touch and sight and smell, something beyond the usual, knows that it’s _Steve_ that he’s holding onto, and every molecule of his body reacts to Steve with feelings of _home_.

“Hey, punk.” Bucky leans his head against Steve’s and pats his back gently before going back to squeezing. “What’s this I hear about you mooning around by my bed like the prince in some kind of _badly_ mistranslated Sleeping Beauty story?”

Steve finally quits trying to compact Bucky’s innards and steps back, holding onto Bucky’s shoulders, but keeping him at arm’s length, looking him over like _Bucky’s_ the one with emotional problems. Which, okay, fair enough, but this isn’t about Bucky. This is about Steve and his absolute inability to function without some kind of cause. Bucky doesn’t mind _that_ so much (he’s used to it), but being the focus of Steve’s righteous crusade is horribly uncomfortable. 

Bucky doesn’t _actually_ want it any other way, if he’s honest with himself. 

“So…” Steve begins, some of the sadness fading out of his eyes to be replaced with his mouthy little shit glow, “does this mean I get to start calling you princess”

“Well, that depends,” Bucky answers, sniffing like he’s bored, like he doesn’t care at all, just to keep from laughing “You gonna be my prince? Because I’m okay with the way you’ve rescued me a few times now, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about you kissing me while you do it.”

Steve laughs, some invisible tension draining out of his shoulders and spine, and for one spectacular second, Bucky sees _his_ Steve grinning at him. He can’t help but go in for another hug, getting his arm around Steve’s waist this time. Steve’s gentler with Bucky’s shoulders than he was with the ribs. Probably worrying over the missing arm. Bucky tells Steve that it doesn’t hurt; there’s nothing in there _to_ hurt, not anymore. He doesn’t add that losing the weight of the thing is a blessing. 

Well, and not wearing a murder-arm. No murder-arm is high on the list of things Bucky’s grateful for these days. 

The hug goes on long enough to be awkward between any two people who haven’t spent more than seventy years not being hugged. However, since both Bucky _and_ Steve are critically behind in their lifetime hug quotient, they don’t get weird when the both finally let go. Bucky does _not_ wipe his eyes with the back of his hand, and, even if he does, it’s only because this part of the palace is older: must be dusty. Maybe he’s just allergic to Steve’s shampoo.

Shampoo. Shampoo sounds like a fantastic idea. 

“I’m using your shower.” Bucky plucks the stupid little arm-sock off his metal shoulder, then pulls his shirt over his head. “I _know_ I’m not sweating in there. It’s _impossible_ to sweat when every piece of my body is frozen solid. But when I wake up, I _feel_ like I’ve been sweating, and all I can think about is getting in the shower. Or maybe I’m just looking forward to the hot water.” He gives a dry laugh as he fumbles one-handed with his belt. “One good thing about the future– the water pressure is _glorious_.”

He lets his pants slide off halfway across the room and wiggles free of his underwear a couple steps later. Boxerbriefs: yet another glorious thing about the future. All his parts stay where they’re put, and that’s just some kind of magic when it doesn’t come with uncomfortable squeezing sensations (his bikini-cut brief experiment was both unfortunate and...well...brief). Behind him, Steve snorts in aggravation, and Bucky bites down a smile. 

Steve always did get pissy when Bucky dumped his clothing around the house. After Steve moved in with him, Bucky started doing it on purpose, just to make sure Steve had a task that let him know he was needed. 

Bucky still needs him. Needs to know Steve is out there, alive and whole. Needs to know that he’s not the only piece of history that got all kinds of yanked out of place and a little bit misused. He hopes the balls of his socks that he leaves just outside the bathroom say _I still need you, buddy_ and not _I’m a jackass who isn’t house-trained_. He shuts the door on Steve’s good-natured grumbling and heads for the oversized shower. He probably should have looked for some kind of plastic or something to stick over his shoulder, but he really doesn’t care if it collected a little water. _Drying_ it can sometimes get weird, but he’s mostly just in a hurry to get warm and clean. Well, and maybe to get a minute or two to himself. 

He steps under the water and tilts his face up, letting the heat wash over him, wash away the sense memory of _cold_ that sticks with him after a cryo-freeze cycle. The Soldier never got to have this: warm water and peace, a little time to play with himself. Bucky wonders how long it’s been since he last got sucked. He could probably add up the months, but he figures it’d be too depressing. Instead, he conjures up a quick and dirty image in his brain, some blonde with pink lips, and he starts to tease himself with shower-warm fingers. 

It doesn’t take long to get himself going, but he wants to drag it out a little. Really _enjoy_ himself. He wishes, just for a second, that he had another hand to play with his own balls, but that’s something he’s gone without for a _very_ long time; he never did trust his murder-arm near his privates. Something about _strong enough to crush steel_ was always a real mood-killer. 

Bucky swipes his hand over the bar of soap on the little shell-shaped soap dish and goes back to stroking himself, enjoying the slip. The soap clearly came with Steve– _bad choice of words, Buck_ – and now all he can smell is _Steve_ in the steam. He tries to ignore it and goes back to his imagined girl, hair all plastered down from the shower, droplets running down broad, muscular shoulders that look like a Greek god.

_Oh, for fuck’s sake._

He pulls back from that and instead opens his eyes so that he can see that it’s only his own hand pulling on himself. He turns off all thoughts except _Yes Good More!_ and keeps going. He’s just starting to get really into it, his own breathless little _ah ah ah!_ echoing in the tiled chamber, his hips starting to really snap forward, when the door opens.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve says, ambling in like it’s nothing. Like walking in on your best friend on the edge of an orgasm is perfectly normal, which, to be fair, it always has been pretty normal. Two teenage to early twenties guys living in a house meant that accidents happened. And the War meant that _everyone_ knew when someone was getting close. It was just a thing that was. 

“Brought you a change of clothes.” Steve doesn’t even look toward the shower, which is probably a good thing, since it’s one of those new-fangled things without a door, and Bucky is just standing there, holding onto his own short arm, soaking wet. “Brought a couple things for you to choose from, since I didn’t know if you’d want to dress in something warm or if you’d prefer to dress for the weather.”

He finally turns around, and Bucky wishes he could let go of himself. Wishes he’d wilt a little or something. _Anything_ other than just staring at Steve, feeling like a rabbit caught in a spotlight. Steve’s eyes trace down the line of Bucky’s arm, and then he raises an eyebrow, a smirk curling his lips.

“I’d apologize for interrupting, but I can’t count the number of times you walked in on _me_.” The corners of his eyes crinkle in a more genuine smile. “Seriously, though, Buck. You’ve been awake, what, ten minutes? And you’re already in here pullin’ your pud. You been that hard up?”

“Yes.” Bucky finally manages to unfreeze his arm and turns around, willing himself down. “Yes, I _have_ been that hard up. I’ve had like…” He counts quickly, recounts quickly. The number is still depressing. “Like _five_ orgasms in seventy-five years.” He glares over his shoulder. “I was almost able to count them on more than one hand. _Thanks_ , Rogers.”

Steve gives him a long look that Bucky can’t read. When did Steve learn to make faces that Bucky can’t read? Once upon a time, he was so fluent in Steve that he could tell before Steve when he was about to have an asthma flare-up. Maybe this expression is just one more thing HYDRA wiped out of him. 

_That_ thought– HYDRA– is enough to remove any lingering fullness from Bucky’s little man, and he sighs heavily and goes back to his shower. 

“Sorry, Buck.” Steve sounds sad, and Bucky huffs and rolls his eyes. 

“Not _actually_ that big a deal, runt.” He slides the bottle of shampoo between his thighs and pops open the top, squeezes a dollop onto his hand, closes the cap with the back of his wrist, and starts lathering his hair. 

“I could...give you a hand?” 

Bucky whips around so quickly he drops the shampoo bottle, knocks the soap onto the floor, and gets suds in his eyes.

“Ow, shit, damn!” He quickly ducks under the spray to clear his hair and his face. As soon as the worst of the stinging is past, he turns around to find Steve staring at him with a genuinely hilarious confused-puppy look on his face. Bucky laughs at him, and Steve starts laughing, too.

They hang there for a long moment, both of them laughing, watching each other across a bathroom that’s as big as their entire apartment was, back before Bucky went into the Army. Bucky’s naked and Steve is dressed, and they’re both laughing so hard that they can’t breathe, and Bucky’s not even sure _why_. He doesn’t really care, either, because it just feels _so damned good_ to laugh. To laugh with _Steve_. He can’t remember the last time they laughed like this, tears welling up, chests heaving, both of them making horrible noises.

Finally Bucky takes a deep, shuddery breath. He feels like the air goes deeper into his lungs than it’s reached in _decades._ Steve does the same, and he’s got the ghost of his laugh still lingering around his eyes and on his mouth, and he’s just the most beautiful thing Bucky’s ever seen. 

That said…

“Okay, so…” Bucky picks up the shampoo and sets it back on a shelf. He reaches for the bar of soap, trying to give himself time to figure out how to answer the question that he’s about make Steve ask again. “So you said what?”

“I said I want to give you a hand.” 

Bucky finally gets brave enough to look up, and Steve is still just watching him, face open and body language easy and relaxed. Far easier than he’s been around Bucky since their reunion (if it can be called that when Bucky didn’t remember Steve’s _name_ at the time). 

“Help with what?” He’s mostly just stalling now, because he has _no idea_ how to answer that offer. On the one hand, it’s _Steve_ , and that would be strange. Wouldn’t it? Or maybe it’s Steve and it wouldn’t be strange, and that’s what’s strange. There’s a throb in his groin that feels like his body saying it wouldn’t find Steve’s hands on it strange, that it quite likes the idea. Bucky tells his downstairs brain to shut it.

“Your shower.” Steve’s face suddenly crumples oddly, and then he turns several hundred shades of red, all at once. With the blue of his eyes, it’s a very patriotic look on him. “ _Oh my God, Bucky!_ No! I didn’t mean…. _No!_ Not that!”

Now it’s Bucky’s turn to laugh again. At Steve. At himself. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Laughing feels good, and he wants to soak up as much of it as he can get. Steve quits looking horrified and starts to giggle. _Captain Fucking America_ is giggling like a little kid, and it’s so delightful that Bucky sits down hard on the bottom of the shower, leaning his face on his knees as he laughs. 

They eventually get themselves under control, laughter fading out slowly into little fits of breathy laughter. Bucky looks up and has a wistful thought that Steve’s face, glowing with happiness and health like it is, could blind him. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, wondering when the dampness of humor turned into the well of tears that come from some other emotion. He forces himself to keep looking at Steve and holds his one hand up.

“Actually,” he says as Steve saunters across the room to catch his wrist and heave him to his feet, “I could use a hand. Showering. One's enough to get the other job done, but I can't ever soap my right shoulder blade.”

Steve just nods like he gets it, and what the hell: he probably does. Bucky thinks of all the times he had to go in and half-lift Steve’s frail body out of the tub on a Saturday night, back before the serum made Steve so strong. Sometimes Bucky’d have to go in with him from the beginning to wash Steve’s hair and his bony back while Steve flopped around like a puppet with cut strings. Sometimes it happened when Steve’s lungs caught up to him at the end of an endless work week. Bucky always did it in the middle of Steve’s annual round of pneumonia. Frequently it happened when Steve’s big mouth and bigger heart walked his feeble little limbs into a fight they couldn’t hope to win. 

The two of them washing one body is oddly familiar, even though it’s all happening the opposite direction from what Bucky remembers. Steve steps fully into the shower, ignoring the fact that he’s soaking his clothes. His t-shirt, already a couple sizes too small, turns transparent almost immediately, and Bucky turns away quickly, not entirely certain why the sight of Steve’s nipples makes his mouth water. He’s fairly certain he’s never had that response to Steve’s nipples before. He wonders if someone programmed a little deviancy into the Soldier, but discards that out of hand. Most likely it’s just a combination of being hard up on the dating front and actually being near the warm body of a person he genuinely trusts. 

Still, it’s a little unsettling.

At the other end of things is the feeling of Steve’s hands, soapy and firm, careful and confident, rubbing soap into Bucky’s back. It’s not only _not_ strange, it’s settling. The touch and hint of massage soothe him, and Bucky lets his head drop forward. Steve snorts that horsey huff of a laugh, seeing through the ploy, but he strokes up the back of Bucky’s neck with both thumbs, anyway. Bucky sighs and lets his eyelids drop shut. Steve is at his back, and Steve will _watch_ his back. Just this once, just for these few minutes, Bucky can let down his guard and tell the Soldier to shut it. 

Much to his delight, the Soldier complies, and, by the time Steve turns Bucky around and starts soaping his chest, he’s completely relaxed. It’s probably a good thing, because Bucky is afraid of looking up and finding that Steve’s nipples look tasty. He tries to distract himself with thoughts of putting food into his mouth.

“I could _murder_ some grub,” Bucky says, without opening his eyes, and then he finds himself beaming. He said _murder_ and didn’t flash back to something horrible. All he can picture is something good to eat. Fruit, maybe. Bucky likes fruit. Or maybe some of the dishes that T’Challa has often told him he _must_ try. Bucky still can’t pronounce half of them, but the descriptions he’s heard make his mouth water. 

“I trust you washed _that_ pretty well before,” Steve says, and Bucky opens his eyes to find Steve staring down below waist height on Bucky’s body. 

Bucky slaps Steve’s hands away from his arm and turns around to rinse.

“Yeah, yeah. I _don’t need your help with that_ ,” he reminds Steve firmly, shaking his head. “Pervert.”

Steve reaches past him and turns off the water, and Bucky just kinda unconsciously leans his head back against Steve’s shoulder. They used to live so much in each other’s space that they just kinda propped against each other pretty often, and Bucky is grateful to find himself feeling just that comfortable again. 

He has so many things to be thankful for these days, and he ticks over and over them like beads on a rosary. He’s grateful to Steve for being such a rock and to T’Challa for giving him a place to feel secure. He’s even pretty glad for Sam, leaping into the fray with Steve, although he can admit to being a little jealous that Sam was there to leap while Bucky was busy being a brain-washed Russian assassin. There will never be enough thanks he could offer to the rest of Steve’s team for showing up and giving so much to try to help him prove his innocence. He _knows_ they did it for Steve, but, if they hadn’t, Bucky wouldn’t be _here_. He wouldn’t be leaning against Steve’s strong chest, held up and cared for by the only person in the world Bucky can trust when he’s this vulnerable. 

Steve hugs him and pats his chest before he steps away, and Bucky doesn’t have time to turn around before a towel hits him in the back of the head. He turns around and sticks out his tongue at Steve’s back as Steve crosses the room, shedding his wet clothing as he goes. Steve catches him in the mirror and rolls his eyes, so Bucky includes a rude hand gesture he learned from Dernier. Of course, Steve served with Dernier, too, so _of course_ he knows what it means. He just returns it, and they both chuckle. Steve grabs his own towel and starts drying his hair.

“I’ll call the kitchen to send something up?” It’s an offer and question in one, and Bucky nods at him. 

“Sounds good.” He goes to examine the clothes Steve brought in, starting the strangest and best shower Bucky’s ever taken. Steve goes on into the hallway of the apartment, presumably to find pants and put in an order for room service. 

Steve brought him a pair of loose shorts and a sleeveless shirt, along with a pair of washed-soft sweatpants and a hoodie. Bucky pulls on the shorts first, then the sweatpants, then the shirt, then the hoodie. Layers hide some of the scars on his body, and he never does feel warm enough. Not since he fell from the train on his last mission with Steve. 

He still gets nightmares about that, the falling, the lying at the bottom of that endless ravine, wondering why he wasn’t dead. Rarely, though, only when he’s really asleep and not just frozen. He doesn’t _remember_ it, not really. Just impressions of _cold_ and _hurt_ and bright and dark that didn’t always happen in the right order. He wishes that, whatever the Russians and HYDRA had done, they’d taken away _all_ of that memory. He doesn’t need it. Doesn’t need to remember wishing Steve would pick him up and carry him home.

He doesn’t _need_ to remember that, because Steve found him. Steve broke HYDRA and turned Bucky loose. He gave him enough time and space to remember. Then Steve found him again and threw away _everything_ to protect him, help him, keep him safe and keep him free. And, after all that, now he’s here again, being Bucky’s friend, Bucky’s _Steve_ again. Finding _this_ on the other side of ice and Russians and ice and HYDRA and more ice _almost_ makes having survived the intervening years worth it. 

That’s probably why Steve’s come back to check on him so much. Probably why Steve stands around outside the cryo-pod and, Bucky assumes, looks like a kicked puppy. Bucky’s going to have to see if T’Challa will issue a standing order for Bucky to be brought out every time Steve visits. Really, the future is too hard to do on their own for two poor dumb boys from Brooklyn. 

A pair of thick, fuzzy socks sit on the counter with little Cap shields all over them, and Bucky pulls them on with frustrating slowness. Who knew that socks were a two-handed job? Once he’s done, though, he wiggles his toes and hums happily to himself. Perfect. Warm and toasty and really very comfortable. He grabs the towel to flop it over his wet hair and heads out to the sitting room.

He stops just before stepping into the room to watch Steve. Steve’s not doing anything really exciting; he’s just standing there with a phone receiver pressed against his ear, ordering food. But he’s smiling while he does it, some of the laughter from the bathroom caught on his face, making him look suddenly younger, and it makes Bucky’s heart clench. Something in him broke loose as he and Steve laughed in the bathroom, and whatever it is rattles around in Bucky’s chest now, reminding him both of how empty he was for so, so long and how filled up and happy he feels _right this minute_. 

Steve knows he’s there, but all he does to show that he knows is relax his shoulders a little more.

 _Trying not to startle me,_ Bucky thinks with a warm rush in his heart. 

He walks up behind Steve and wraps his arm around Steve’s waist, propping his chin on one of Steve’s wide shoulders. If Steve is surprised or confused, he doesn’t show it. He just pats Bucky’s hand where it rests against his belly and let’s the hug go on. He finishes his call and puts down the in-house telephone, and _still_ he just stands there, wearing all of a single towel around his waist, and lets Bucky hug him. It’s a good thing, because Bucky’s not done hugging yet, and he’d be obligated to drag Steve back and keep hugging if Steve tried to leave. Steve links his fingers through Bucky’s and squeezes just a little.

“I do need pants, at least, Barnes.” Steve’s voice has gone a little damp, and Bucky slides their joined hands higher so he can get better leverage to keep Steve there. Steve snickers, but Bucky ignores him. 

He knows he’s more than a little touch-starved, known _that_ for a long time. There’s nothing he could have done about it, before. Before Steve found him. Before he brought Bucky to such a safe-feeling place. Now that Bucky has someone he can actually bring himself to touch, he’s going to touch all he can. Steve’ll have to leave again. He’ll either have a planet to save or a war to fight. Maybe a new supervillain will raise their ugly head, or someone will have a kitten stuck up a tree. The rest of the world can have Captain America, but until it calls for him, Bucky needs to keep close to Steve. 

Steve’s shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter by the time Bucky finally relents. He isn’t sure how Wakanda feels about naked superheros, but it’s best not to push things. They’re his hosts, after all, and he doesn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Also, he wants Steve to answer the door, so Steve really should replace his towel kilt with something more substantial.

“You okay?” Steve asks him, and Bucky rolls his eyes and tries to pretend that it’s a stupid question. 

He turns around to look around the bright, open sitting room: enormous television screen built into one wall, the other wall one long, deep padded seat, like a couch but built into the wall. It’s got a high back and thick cushions. Extra pillows are sprinkled on it like marshmallows on those disgusting sundaes he used to like when he was kid. Come to think of it, one of those sounds pretty damned good right now, too.

“Roll up your flaps, Rogers.” He walks over to fling himself down on the seat. It’s almost more like a really long, barely narrow bed than a sofa, but it’s comfy as sin. He tries to convince himself he chooses that because the thing is insanely soft and molds itself to his butt. It’s hard to ignore the fact that it also has excellent sightlines and two directions from which to flee. “I’m _fine_. Just...this is good. It’s you and me an’ no one’s shooting at us. It’s almost like we’re back home before the war.”

“But warmer.” Steve’s voice fades out as he goes to find clothing. “Much warmer. And it smells better. No boiling cabbage to be found.”

Bucky laughs again and tucks himself against the arm of the couch, pulling his legs under himself. He grabs a couple of the throw pillows to shove around his side and behind his back, creating a nest for himself. It’s a _good_ nest, too. Snug. Comfortable. Protected by a genuine hero. He settles in and stares out the single window, watching the sky turn flaming red as the sun sinks toward the horizon. The dark seems to come on so fast here, and Bucky loves to watch the turn of days. He’s missed a lot of sunrises and sunsets in cryofreeze, and he reminds himself it’s for everyone’s safety, even his own. Still. Nice to see at least one day turn to night.

Steve walks back in wearing soft knit pants and a t-shirt. He stops short and gives Bucky a fond, amused kind of look.

“Can’t stay away from soft stuff.” He shakes his head and walks across to ruffle Bucky’s hair. Then he takes the towel from around Bucky’s shoulders and drops it over his head. 

Bucky waits to tense from being blinded, hooded, but nothing happens except that Steve tries to scalp him with the towel. He’s rubbing it so hard over Bucky’s head that he’s fairly sure he’s got friction burns on his ears and forehead.

“Jesus, Steve!” He’s reminded of the time he broke his arm playing stickball with that short, chubby kid from the next block. Steve had helped him wash his hair and dress himself and tried to rip his hair out by the roots with a towel until he’d healed. “Leave me _something_ to keep my head warm!”

“Toughen up,” Steve snaps, still rubbing vigorously. It’s the same words that itty-bitty pre-serum Steve used, and it makes another knot unclench in Bucky’s gut. 

Steve finally decides Bucky is adequately dry, and leaves for a minute to put the towel away. Bucky watches him go and doesn’t even realize when he closes his eyes. He opens them when Steve sits down beside him.

“Tired?” Steve’s being gentle with him again, and Bucky kinda hates him for it. Not as much as he hates himself for needing it, though. 

He sighs and stands up, dislodging pillows all around him. Once he’s on his feet, he stretches long and hard, then prowls toward the kitchenette without a word. He’s thirsty and a little cranky, and he’s just tired of feeling tired. The first glass of cold water goes down easily, so he gulps down another and then pokes around in Steve’s fridge. 

If the world could see how Captain America usually chooses to eat, they’d all demand a supersoldier serum. Sweet food and fatty food and artery-clogging cholesterol (Bucky read about that on the internet). Enough rich things to kill pre-serum Steve a hundred times over. And Bucky doesn’t doubt that the over-stuffed contents are only about enough food for two meals. He remembers watching Steve eat, back with the Commandos. Bucky was the only one who could keep up, but he often found himself stuck in thoughts of Zola’s toying around with his insides, and then he didn’t have much appetite left. Now though, it all looks pretty good. 

He grabs a bag of cheese cubes and goes back to the couch. Steve has turned on some movie about an artist or about graffiti or something, and Bucky sits down beside him, putting his bad side against Steve and leaning in close. 

“Okay, I don’t get this at all.” Bucky pops a couple more bites of cheddar in his mouth and scoots closer to Steve’s heat. With all the added muscle, his once-cold-and-bony friend has turned into a mobile space furnace. 

Steve lifts his arm for Bucky to lean in close, and then drapes it around Bucky’s shoulders. If he was a cat, Bucky’s pretty sure he’d be purring.

“What’s not to get?” Steve reaches over with his left hand to grab a couple of cheese bites of his own. Fair enough; it _is_ his cheese.

“I mean, I get leaving a mark on the world, okay.” Bucky doesn’t even bother swallowing before he speaks, and he’s glad that it’s just Steve who wouldn’t know a table manner if it walked up and dotted his lips with a napkin. “And I kinda get wanting to make a statement. But just scribbling shit on other people’s buildings seems kinda rude. I mean, even if you’re covering up other people’s messes. Doing it without permission is just….” Bucky shakes his head, and Steve laughs.

“And I’m suddenly realizing you are actually a ninety-year-old man, Buck.” Steve leans his head against Bucky’s, and they both just sort of stare at the screen for a while.

Well, Bucky is just staring at the screen. Knowing Steve, he’s making all kinds of artistic criticisms in his head. He used to babble at Bucky for _hours_ about a single piece in whatever museum they managed to visit the day before. Bucky never understood a word that came out of his mouth, but he always loved to listen to it. He never doubted that Steve was the smart one, even if Steve never did seem to manage to put his brains to use in school. He also never put them to use figuring out how to avoid being dragged down an alley and getting the snot beat out of him. 

Bucky curls more firmly into Steve’s side, tucking up close, and flings his arm across Steve’s waist. 

_Idiot_ , he think fondly, hugging a little bit, soaking up some more warmth. He knows he could go to sleep right there, but there’s a polite knock at the door, and Steve untangles himself to go answer it. He comes back with a rolling tray of covered dishes, and Bucky sits up straighter and feels himself drooling over the spicy smells that hover in the air around the tray. 

Thirty minutes later, the food is mostly demolished, and Bucky thinks he’s about to explode. Even so, he can’t seem to stop eating the little balls of something good that are drowning in honey. Steve keeps giving him _looks_ for picking them up with his fingers, and Bucky keeps returning his _look_ with a glare of his own. 

Steve has _no room_ to criticize Bucky’s eating habits; _he_ eats like he’s still in the trenches and doesn’t know when the next meal is coming. Of course, when he was just a little thing, Bucky ate that way, too. Big meals of good food were too few and far between back in the old days. At least Bucky eventually learned to pretend he had manners; it helped him get dates with the birds. Granted, when Steve went out with him and a couple of girls, he tended to fake table manners, too. Not that it helped. Kid got way too passionate about worker’s rights and politics and the involvement of the US in the war in Europe for first dates, and he never did get to the second one. 

Ah well, if a bird couldn’t see Steve’s value for herself, she didn’t deserve him anyway.

Bucky finishes the last crispy bite and swipes his index finger through the honey, sucking it off. The movie is finally wrapping up, and, if Steve starts another art thing, Bucky’s going to slap him. He makes a dive for the remote, and Steve wrestles him for a several minutes. Bucky finally wins by actively sitting on Steve, pinning his arms down by the simple expedient of plopping a buttcheek on top of each one. 

Steve is laughing hard enough to wheeze, and the sound is so close to his asthmatic breathing when they were kids that it makes Bucky’s heart give a weird little clench. He gets up slowly, holding the remote over his head, and he turns to look down at Steve. Steve peeled off his shirt after Bucky’d accidentally jarred his elbow, making him dump sauce down his front, and, if Bucky ignores the shirtless spread of chest and shoulders, Steve almost looks like the earlier memories that have flooded back. His fine hair is a limp mess from the shower and lack of combing combined with a wrestling match with someone who fights dirty. His eyes have the soft glow that they used to direct at Bucky– half exasperation and half fondness– when Bucky’d go wading into a fight to extract Steve’s bloody form and cursing mouth. It never was hero worship, and Bucky’s missed that look. 

Steve always was the hero; Bucky just played cleanup for him. The world seems less terrifying, less new, with them both back in their rightful places for a few minutes. It’s not that Bucky hasn’t appreciated Steve saving him. Over and over, really. It’s that Bucky has _hated_ being Steve’s mission. Has hated being on a pedestal like some kind of princess in a tower. When Steve set him up so high, Bucky couldn’t quite reach him. No matter how much the world has changed, Bucky’s supposed to be _beside_ Steve, not above him or behind him. 

He only _ever_ agreed to stay behind when it meant that he had a scope on the threat and could keep Steve’s fool head from getting blown clean off his shoulders. That’s far different from staying in Steve’s shadow to stay safe.

“Let’s see if we can’t find something a little more _my_ speed,” Bucky says, starting to click through channels. He remembers the days when there was only one radio program on at a time, and he remembers how confusing things got when they finally had the choice of three or four. Five hundred channels is a little intimidating, really. He finds a show on dolphins and drops the remote back on the table, curling back into Steve’s side. Steve chuckles a little, probably laughing at him, and Bucky ignores it. He also tries to ignore how smooth Steve’s shoulder is against his cheek as he leans in and snuggles close.

“Your shoulder is gouging me,” Steve tells him, shifting a little uncomfortably, so Bucky huffs in mock-frustration and tips over to put his head in Steve’s lap. Steve immediately starts petting his hair, and Bucky wriggles to settle himself more deeply into the squishiness of the seat cushions below him. 

“Happy now?” He looks up at Steve, and grins to let Steve know that Bucky’s gotten what he wanted in the first place. He always did like having his hair stroked, and he’s wondered if it’d feel as good when his hair has gotten so long. 

It does. Better even.

Steve gives his disappointed, judging kind of horsey stare for gloating, and it makes Bucky laugh. He rolls to face the tv again and lets himself drift. He’s warm and safe and comfortable, and he’s soaking up all of Steve’s touch that he can get before it’s time to go back into the deep freeze. He loses track of the dolphin thing for a little bit, but he likes the swishy blue of the water and the sunlit blue of the sky. He likes the way the dolphins move, sleek and playful. And he tries not to compare the Soldier and Captain America to dolphins on the hunt. Steve keeps petting his hair, and Bucky curls himself up a bit, pulling his knees up to his chest to keep his body heat all tucked in close. 

“I can get you a blanket.” Steve puts his right hand on Bucky’s ribs and keeps hair-petting with the left. “If you’re cold, I mean. I don’t mind.”

“I _do_ mind,” Bucky grumbles. “I’m comfortable, and I’m not moving.”

Steve laughs at him again, warm and rich, and Bucky wishes he could get a blanket made out of that laugh. He’d take it into the pod and wake up to it every time. He’d sleep better, dream better, if he knew that laugh was in there with him. 

“Just for a minute, Buck.” Steve pats the top of his head and tenses to rise. 

Sighing hard, just so Steve knows how put out he is, Bucky sits up and slouches against the back of the couch. Steve ignores his sulking and gets up, leaving the room for nearly three whole minutes. Not that Bucky counts the time passing. Honest.

So maybe he does, but he’s on a deadline here. He _knows_ he can’t stay awake too long. The longer he’s out of cryo-sleep, the greater the chance that someone will see him, recognize him, accidentally tell the world where he is. He can’t risk that. Can’t risk someone finding the words, finding _him_ , and releasing the Soldier again. Whatever else happens, Bucky will _not_ let that thing back out. Not willingly. Not if he can help it at all.

Steve drops back down beside him, and Bucky arranges a couple pillows and flops back over into Steve’s lap. The blanket Steve spreads over him is soft, made from some material that feels heavy for the thinness of it, and the weight makes him feel cocooned. Safe. Held. As soon as Steve drops one of those heavy hands back onto his shoulder, Bucky is out like a light.

He doesn’t know how much time passes he while he sleeps, and that makes him mad. Steve is asleep when Bucky wakes up, slumped sideways away from Bucky, his hand still resting on Bucky’s shoulder like it’s glued in place. That hand makes something strange happen in Bucky’s belly, and not getting what it means makes him mad, too. He plants his hand on the couch and tries to push himself up, but mostly he just dislodges a couple of pillows and Steve, and then he’s rolling off into the floor. He has one second to miss his murderous robot arm, and then he gets to taste the carpet fiber for himself. And _that_ makes him mad.

“Buck?” Steve sounds sleepy, voice soft and surprised, and all the anger drips out of Bucky between one breath and the next. “Bucky? Where are you?”

He rolls over and smiles crookedly up at Steve through the tangled mess of his own hair. 

“Lend a hand here, Steve?” He holds up his right arm. “I seem to have misplaced one of mine.”

Steve snorts at his lame attempt at humor, but he can’t entirely tamp down the hint of a smile and the flash of laughter in his eyes. Bucky counts it as a win, anyway. Steve stands up and steps to a position that gives him better leverage, and then he heaves Bucky to his feet like he’s lifting a little bitty baby bunny rather than a couple hundred pounds (minus one arm) of Soldier. Bucky remembers the Soldier watching Steve actively try to hold down a helicopter with nothing more than his own grip. He’s not sure he could have done that even _with_ the arm. Wondering how Steve managed it and remembering the look on Steve’s face as he did makes that weird something bubble in his belly again.

He considers asking Steve about it, but he doesn’t want to remind Steve of bad times, not when Steve’s looking at him all soft and goofy and _happy_. 

Instead of making Steve sad about him, he decides to poke the bear in a way that’ll at least lead to a fun tirade instead of a bad one.

“I guess you’ve heard the bad news,” he says, trying to play casual. He walks into the kitchenette and pulls out a couple bottles of beer that have been stocked for Steve. Stocking beer for Steve or himself is kinda an exercise in futility, but it’s a nice gesture, nonetheless. He has no idea where the bottle opener is, so he just takes them both back to Steve and lets him do the honors. Hey, supersoldier. Two hands. Gotta be useful for _something_.

“What bad news?” Steve sounds leery, like he’s scented danger in the wind and he’s getting ready to bolt.

“Can you _believe_ they moved the damned Dodgers to Los Fucking Angeles?” 

Steve comes up off the couch so fast, he might have had a spring under his bottom. Bucky starts to snigger, knowing what’s coming. 

“Why the _hell_ did the _Dodgers_ have to go to the ungodly west coast, while the goddamned _Yankees_ get to sit around and pretend like they’re the national darlings or something!” Steve’s face is red, and his eyes are flashing. His jaw is squared up, and he looks even more remarkably horsey than he usually does. He continues to rant, and both arms get involved, waving around, clawing at his hair. He puffs up his chest like some kind of over-inflated balloon, and he starts an all new lecture on instant replay and how it’s a good idea, and it _does_ seem to get more calls right, but they shouldn’t be getting that many calls wrong in the first place. 

Steve’s baseball tantrum fills Bucky with a warm glow from his head to his toes, and he just smiles up at Steve and waits. The diatribe shifts to sabermetrics, expansion teams, and performance-enhancing drugs. Bucky carefully stifles a laugh at that; it seems a bit ironic for Steve, of all people, to _have opinions_ on that. Steve gets through the cost of hotdogs at the ballpark, how plasticine and without soul he finds Citi Field, and finally, quietly, announces himself to be an Arizona Diamondbacks fan. 

Bucky has long since quit trying to stifle his laughter, and Steve flops down beside him, half sitting on his leg. 

“So how ‘bout you?” he asks, turning his head until he and Bucky are nose to nose. “Who’s _your_ team now?”

“Haven’t watched a lot of sports recently.” Bucky takes a long pull on his beer, feeling a very accustomed longing well up in his chest. “Maybe, when we figure out how to get the Russians and HYDRA out of my head for good...maybe you can take me to a game. Show me this new team of yours.”

“‘Course, Buck.” Steve leans back; Bucky’s stumpy shoulder is in the middle of his spine, but he doesn’t complain. He just settles in, and Bucky remembers that about Steve. 

He _remembers_ Steve choosing to be uncomfortable if it got him close to Bucky. Bucky used to be the one who ran so hot, the one who got used as a personal hot water bottle. Steve would put his cold little toes– so icy Bucky could feel them through two pairs of socks– against Bucky’s butt, even though he had to fold practically in half to do it. They’d wedge into one bed, not even a double, when the temperature dipped and the radiator quit giving out heat. Bucky always woke up with Steve practically on top of him, a cold little monkey, clinging tightly to his warmth.

“Yeah,” he says, tilting his head to rest it on Steve’s shoulder. “You’ll take me to a game and buy me an overpriced hotdog, and in a crowd of hats and jerseys, no one’ll know who we are. We can just watch a game and eat Cracker Jack and...yeah, Steve. That’ll be awesome.”

Steve goes back to flipping channels on the television, and Bucky excuses himself once to go get more beer. He hears muted explosions and looks out to see Steve has paused his channel flipping on some movie or other that looks to be about the War. He’s got his confused puppy face on again, and Bucky looks more closely at the screen. He _instantly_ spots the problem and starts to giggle. That, of course, attracts Steve’s attention, and he quickly flips the channel.

“Sorry, Buck.” He looks so contrite. 

It’s kinda adorable. 

“Go back!” Bucky orders, hurrying over to flop down beside him. He kicks one leg up to rest his thigh on top of Steve’s. “If they can’t even get the jeeps kinda right, I have _got_ to see the rest of that.”

Steve studies him for a long time, face expressionless. Bucky snorts and shakes his head.

“I’m _fine_ , Steve.” He takes a swallow of beer. “I don’t think a badly researched movie is going to bring back the nightmares. And there is no way something that funny’ll bring out the Soldier.”

Steve reluctantly flips the channel back, and drops the remote. They watch in silence for all of thirty seconds, and then neither of them can take it anymore, and they start criticizing everything from the uniforms to the lingo. Before long, they’re both flopped out toward each end of the giant sofa, half on top of one another, laughing hard enough to cry, and they’ve entirely lost track of the plot. Steve thinks there’s a romance. Bucky thinks the girl is a prostitute. They’ve run out of steam arguing over that and they just sit for some time until Steve bumps his foot against Bucky’s hip.

“So I hate to ask, but I just gotta.” Steve sits up enough to see Bucky’s face more clearly.

Bucky shakes his too-long hair out of his face and smiles at Steve’s face. It’s a good face, and Bucky is so eternally grateful to not only see it, but to know who it is. Steve smiles back, and then his cheeks go pink. 

“You always were the one who could get any dame in the world.” He licks his lips.

Bucky tries to hide the emotional blow to his guts. Yeah, he _was_ good with ladies. Back when he was just Bucky. Back before the Soldier took him over. Back before he turned into the scruffy, ugly thing with just one arm that he sees in the mirror when he looks now.

“Shit, Buck, that didn’t come out right.” Steve is already leaning forward, one hand clenched around Bucky’s wrist. “I just mean... I just can’t understand how _you_ of all people have seen so little action. I mean, hell, _I’ve_ had more than five partners in that time, and you’re still gorgeous.”

Bucky scrubs his hand over his face, wondering how rumpled his whiskers and hair are, wondering if he should maybe try to shave and get a haircut one of these wakeful days.

“I didn’t say five _people_.” The words are muffled, because Bucky’s still got his hand over half his face. “I said five...ya know...orgasms.”

There’s a silence after that. It goes on. And on. And finally Bucky gets annoyed enough to find Steve looking at him with absolute _horror._

“How...how many women?” He’s all hushed, like he’s trying to get away with something during Mass. Not that they ever _did_ away with whispering during Mass. Because Steve never could learn to actually be quiet.

Bucky knows he’s going to have to answer. It’s _Steve_. In over ninety years, he’s never _once_ intentionally lied to Steve. Hidden the truth a little, sure. Sometimes he had to shade a few things. But he’s never once lied when Steve asks him outright. He’s not going to start now.

“There _was_ a woman. Once.” Bucky tries to make himself laugh, but it gets strangled on the way from his brain to his mouth. “I mean, one of them was with a woman. A whore.”

“Bucky!” Steve looks scandalized, and Bucky hopes it’s over language and not that Bucky hired a professional. Either way, he just shrugs.

“Look, the Soldier wasn’t exactly allowed to go pick up women at any of the usual places, right.” He sits up and rests his elbow on his knee. The gesture feels all kinds of cockeyed and uncomfortable, so he grabs a nearby pillow and hugs it to his chest, leaning himself against the back of the couch and speaking to the ceiling so he won’t have to watch Steve be disappointed in him. “And then, when I mostly got my head back, I was _afraid_ to go to the usual spots to pick up women, right? I mean, I tried to take care of myself by, well, myself. But while I could remember like, sex, and I could remember it feeling good, I couldn’t remember how to…” He trails off and risks a glance toward Steve. 

Steve is watching him, still sprawled back along his half of the couch. He doesn’t look like he’s judging. Mostly, he looks like he’s experiencing some vague pain. Great. Army rations didn’t do it. Eating what they could find with the Commandos didn’t do it. Probably nothing in the world has done it, since the serum. Except Bucky.

He’s given Captain America heartburn.

“So I found this woman in Belarus.” He shrugs awkwardly and looks at his sock-covered toes like they’re the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen. He notices that there’s a little star-spangled disk over each of his big toes, so he wiggles them and imagines it’s Steve throwing his bouncy metal toy around. “She, ahhh, she agreed to go back to...to the place where I was staying. That was important for me. I mean, especially then. I wasn’t really comfortable _anywhere_ , but I felt more secure on my own turf. Especially if I was gonna be, ya know, exposing myself.”

He risks another glance at Steve and finds him looking a little less dyspeptic, a little more understanding. 

“Anyway,” Bucky forces himself to go on, even though he’d rather just drop the whole thing. He needs Steve to really _get_ it. To understand him. To offer him absolution. “So we go back, and she doesn’t waste any time. Which is a good thing for me, since I didn’t want to take off my coat or my gloves, ya know? So she just unsnaps and unzips, uses her hand to get me ready, and then, I don’t know, just kind of swallows me whole. It was...it was sort of terrifying, to be honest. For one minute there, I wasn’t sure where my...where my johnson had gone. And then she did something with her throat and her tongue, and I…” He can feel his cheeks heating, and he refuses to look at Steve. 

In the past, Steve would have been the first one to blush. If he’s not blushing now, Bucky doesn’t want to know. 

“Let’s just say I figured out where everything had gone, and then I remembered how it all worked.” He feels an ironic kind of smile twist his lips. “Umm, fast.”

Steve doesn’t laugh, and Bucky kinda loves him again right in that moment. He decides to forgive the idiot for dropping his shield into a goddamned river in the middle of a fight with the Soldier. There are plenty of other things he can pull out when he’s mad and needs to remind Steve that he’s an idiot with the self-preservation instincts of a garden vegetable, but Bucky’ll let that one go.

“So I guess there probably wasn’t any cuddling afterward then.” Steve sits up and tugs on the back of Bucky’s sweatshirt. Bucky folds into his arms and tries to let go of some of his nerves. Steve hugs him for a long, still second, and then he flops backward, using his stupid strength to heave Bucky with him. Bucky is all set to try to wrestle his way free, but Steve just kinda starts petting him again, so instead of fighting, he goes boneless and lets himself ooze down onto the cushion beside Steve. 

“Hasn’t really been any _nice_ touch in a long, long time.” Bucky wiggles around until he’s managed to squish himself between Steve and the back of the couch. One thing to be said in favor of losing his arm, there’s not that awkward spare limb problem. He drapes his arm across Steve’s chest, flops one leg across both of Steve’s, and settles in to just rest for awhile. 

“You always were like a cat,” Steve says, all fond and sappy. “Always needed to be snuggled up and petted.”

“More like a puppy, according to your mom.” Bucky smiles as the memories wash back in soft, warm waves. They surface slowly, Steve and Bucky curled into a single blanket on the floor, Bucky draped on Steve’s lap as he drew “Sarah called us puppies in a dog pile. Do you remember that?”

Steve smiles down and Bucky smiles up, and they both just kinda...hang there. Smiling. Thoughts drifting to a happier past. Bucky lets himself float a bit, suspended in dreams that might be remembering. He closes his eyes, wanting to remember everything he can.

Somehow he gets on to thoughts of all the girls he took dancing, all the dames he took to parties. He remembers finding dark corners for a little bit of kissing. Remembers going home and chasing Steve out into the night with enough change for a shake down at the corner. He thinks again of the prostitute in Belarus and the warmth of a mouth enveloping him, and he closes his eyes and shifts until he’s got a little pressure where he can rub. HIs hips are barely moving, and it’s just enough to feel good without taking him any further. Just enough friction to make him sigh and relax. Just enough touch to–

To make him realize he’s fully hard and humping Steve’s leg like a badly behaved dog. 

Some of the fullness in his pants goes away, and Bucky can’t decide if he’s hoping for a rolled-up newspaper to cool him off or if he’s hoping that Steve will play along with pretending not to notice what just happened. Bucky shifts his leg backward and wriggles into the back of the couch. He’s _extremely_ glad that it’s a giant built-in, supposed-to-double-as-a-bed of a couch, because he has just enough room to get a little space between his awkward swelling and Steve’s thigh. He flatly refuses to open his eyes. If he keeps them closed, he can pretend that he’s sleeping and has no idea what his body has been doing. 

Steve’s vast barrel of a chest shakes with suppressed laughter, and Bucky resists the urge to smack him. He is going to play asleep until that doesn’t work, and then he’ll play dead. If it’ll keep things from getting uncomfortable between them, he’ll actually, truthfully, _really_ die. He’s pretty sure he can make it happen. Worst case scenario, he’ll kill Steve for laughing at him, and then he can go back to wallowing in embarrassment in peace. Steve would understand, Bucky’s pretty certain.

Steve sucks in a huge breath and lets it all flow back out in a giant, noisy sigh. And then he shifts slightly, hardly any movement at all, really, and Bucky hears himself let out a bizarre combination of a groan and a happy sigh of his own. Steve’s shift makes his thigh rub all back up between Bucky’s legs, and it’s _fucking heaven_. Between the memories and the years it’s been since he last had a body pressed against his own, Bucky can’t help but to push back into the pressure. Steve– wonderful, understanding, perfect Steve that Bucky could never in a million years be annoyed with– just meets Bucky’s movement with another press of his own.

They keep that up for probably longer than is decent for two people who are both men that like women, and who are just good friends to boot. But Bucky _wants_. He wants so badly that he’s aching with it, shaking as nerves and feelings that he thought died out a long time before wake up. He’s suddenly starving, hungry for more and terrified of how desperate he is to keep going. He wants to stop Steve from letting himself be used this way. He wants to get both legs wrapped around one of Steve’s and rock, grinding until he finds his release. He wants to tell Steve he’s sorry, and he never wants to look at Steve again. He wants to cling and kiss and rub and hump and kiss and bite and…

Steve lets out a soft sound, barely a puff of air, but his face is turned toward Bucky’s and the breath ruffles his hair. Bucky’s heard that sound before, when Steve was just one sleeping roll away, trying to keep his movements small and his sounds swallowed down. He’s heard it come from behind the door to the bathroom down the hall from their old apartment. He’s even heard it once since the Soldier went to sleep and Bucky woke up, from the next bed over in a cheap motel while he and Steve were on the run, heading toward Wakanda and safety. 

_Steve’s turned on, too._

Bucky’s eyes fly open, and he finds Steve staring at him with dark, hungry eyes, pupils so wide the blue of his irises is just a tiny grey ring. Steve licks his lips and Bucky nods, not entirely certain what he’s agreeing to, but he’s damned sure he can’t stop now. He’d agree to _anything_ with Steve looking at him like that, no matter how new and strange it is to be doing this with a man. Steve sighs again, a sound that’s more relief than desperation, and he rolls, turning toward Bucky, one big bicep supporting Bucky’s head. He uses his free hand to tip Bucky’s face up, and his fingers are gentle against Bucky’s chin and jaw. Bucky almost panics for a second, but then he’s got the sharp edge of Steve’s top lip pressed to the seam of his own mouth, and everything inside him goes still and calm.

Kissing is good. His body remembers how to kiss, even if Bucky’s brain barely remembers _that_ it has kissed. He parts his lips and carefully sucks on the fullness of Steve’s pouty bottom lip. The little punk always did have a mouth as pretty as any girl’s; sometimes when Bucky’d had a little to drink, he’d wonder if he could just lean over and see if Steve’s mouth tasted as good as it looked. He never had, of course, because he and Steve weren’t like that. Bucky’s not sure if they’ve somehow gotten like that, or if this is just a thing he needs right now. Either way, he’s not gonna stop kissing until Steve does. Thankfully, Steve shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

Steve’s gets one hand tangled in Bucky’s over-long hair, and he turns Bucky’s head to give himself easier access to Bucky’s mouth. His tongue brushes Bucky’s lips, and Bucky opens for him. Bucky has just enough time to wonder if his beard is strange for Steve, and then Steve let’s go of Bucky’s hair and runs his fingers along his jaw through his whiskers. He shifts again, and Bucky realizes that the hard _thing_ he’s rubbing against is _not_ Steve’s hipbone. He breaks the kiss to bang his head against the back cushion of the couch, letting out a strangled kind of shout, and his entire pelvis bucks forward so hard the contact hurts. 

But _goddamn!_ , is that a good hurt!

“Steve!” He barely recognizes his own voice; he’s never said Steve’s name like that before, he’s absolutely positive. Steve answers with a guttural moan, all breath and no volume, but it feels loud and echoing in Bucky’s head. He’s never heard Steve make a sound like that, and he wants to hear it again. _Needs_ to hear it again. Steve complies, and his whole body shakes against Bucky’s chest as he moans.

Bucky doesn’t want to stop. _Never_ wants to stop. Wants to keep feeling desperate and wanted and wanting, safe and lost in freefall all at once. Wants this _forever_. But he and Steve aren’t _this_ to each other. And even if they’re _this_ right now, Bucky needs to know that it’ll all be okay, that Steve will still be Steve and Bucky will still be Bucky, and they’ll both be just the same when it’s over. 

“Oh, shit, Steve! _Steve_!”

“Yeah, Buck?” Steve scoots a little lower, just his hand cupping the side of Bucky’s face, supporting his head while he noses in under Bucky’s chin, just at the back of his beard. He kinda nuzzles up along Bucky’s jaw and chin, and then he ducks back down to bite the base of Bucky’s throat. He starts to work his way up the side of Bucky’s neck, but asks between bites, “Whatcha need? What can I give you?”

“...” Bucky forgets what he’s trying to say when Steve finds his earlobe and bites, and then Steve flicks his tongue over the ridges inside Bucky’s ear, and Bucky gets his hand around Steve’s back and clings _hard_ , nails scratching as his fingertips slip in Steve’s sweat. He finally gets his wits back when Steve finally quits mauling Bucky’s neck and ear, hitting half his hot buttons at the same time. Before he can get a word out, though, Steve goes back to kissing Bucky’s mouth. Bucky doesn’t want to stop the kiss to say anything, so he just goes with it, brushing his tongue against Steve’s, letting his lips get nibbled at and sucked on and nibbling and sucking on Steve’s in return. 

“Buck,” Steve whispers against his lips, but he doesn’t say anything else. He just gives another of those soft, throaty groans, and wraps both of his big arms around Bucky’s neck, holding on tightly. His kisses start to get a bit more frantic, and Bucky matches him, letting himself bite harder, kiss more deeply. 

He hikes his leg further up, locking his calf around Steve’s butt. He slides his hand down the slope of Steve’s spine to span the back of his ridiculously narrow waist, and he can just feel how tight Steve’s muscles are, the way they ripple when he moves. Bucky’s maybe never really been attracted to a guy before– occasional fantasies notwithstanding– but he can’t deny that he finds the muscle-heated, coiled power of Steve’s body absolutely, _scorchingly_ hot. He shifts again, searching for the friction of Steve’s erection against his own, and he moans when he finds it. 

“Buck,” Steve says again, ending on a long _Uhhhhhn_ when Bucky turns the back and forth thrusting into a hip-spiraling grind. “God, this...you….”

“Please don’t tell me you been dreaming about this forever, Rogers.” Bucky brings his arm back around to Steve’s front, splaying his fingers wide across Steve’s flat stomach just to feel the flex of muscles as Steve moves with him. “I think I’da figured out by now if this was something you’ve been wanting.”

Steve closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Bucky’s, panting out a soft whine when Bucky gets his fingers on one of Steve’s nipples, pinching lightly before he flicks it with his nail. He’s matching Bucky’s thrusts now, both of them sliding together, rolling across each other; every press and release sends little electric shocks through Bucky’s stomach and legs. 

Bucky’s shocked to find that he’s leaking all over in his shorts; he’s never been one to do that, although he’s heard stories about guys that do. The wet fabric starts to bunch up in uncomfortable ways until finally the pressure gets bad enough that Bucky has to reach down and try to shove them back into place. It doesn’t work, and Steve stops rubbing against him. He leans back a little and frowns as Bucky gets a little more desperate with digging at his own pants.

“Clothing malfunction?” Steve’s got that one eyebrow up thing going on, the look of sardonic amusement so familiar that it makes Bucky’s heart do that weird clench thing. 

“Got my shorts in a bunch,” Bucky answers, trying for teasing and light. It comes out rougher than he intends, and Steve licks his lips like he likes hearing Bucky torn up just for him. “Maybe I should lose a layer.”

Steve rolls backward off the couch, landing and standing in a single graceful movement, and Bucky sits up to peel off his socks. He gets the first one halfway down his foot, and then Steve kneels in front of him and takes over. His hands are gentle as he finishes rolling off first one sock and then gently removes the other. He offers a hand to help Bucky stand, and then reaches for his waistband, fingers shaking as they brush the elastic of the sweatpants. 

“You could….” Steve clears his throat, pauses to take a steadying breath, and then starts over. “You could take off both layers. If you wanted to. And I...I could do the same.”

Bucky’s brain stutters to a half for a solid three heartbeats. A little rubbing together with clothing in the way, a little kissing between friends, isn’t a big deal. At least, that’s what Bucky’s been telling himself in the back of his mind. Well, what’s left of his mind with Steve hot and alive and moving in his embrace. Taking clothing _off_ though, that moves the whole thing a lot closer to sex. Bucky’s heard how guys have sex with other guys, and he never thought it sounded like a lot of fun. Now, though, he’s torn between a sudden, gut-punch of desire for skin against his own and fear that doing _that_ with Steve would be going too far. Could damage what they _do_ have between them with something that’s too intrusive to leave _Steve and Bucky_ and _Bucky and Steve_ where they’ve always been.

“Hey, hey!” Steve cups Bucky’s face in his hands and kisses the apple of his cheek, the corner of his eyelids, the edge of his lip. “Buck, no, look it’s….” He takes another slow breath and then carefully wraps one arm around Bucky’s shoulders, leaving Bucky’s arm free to slide around Steve’s neck on the other side. They fit together easily, and their mouths mold to one another’s, kissing as comfortable as hugging, and no more sexually charged. 

Bucky’s confused about how it works like this. He’s never had a _comfortable_ kiss before. Just a kiss that didn’t need to mean anything else. One that wasn’t going anywhere. Just...just a kiss. Maybe it’s because this is Steve he’s kissing, and Steve is safe and warm and everything that the Soldier is not. Bucky can trust him. _Does_ trust him. With his life. With his past. With his body. He just _trusts_ him. So he nods, his lips against Steve’s lips. His eyes still closed from kissing, but he says, as best he can around Steve’s tongue:

“Yeah, okay. If you want to.”

Steve pulls away smiling, and Bucky can’t bear not to watch. He opens his eyes and watches Steve watch him.

“Seriously, Bucky.” He licks his already shining lips and eyes Bucky from head to toe, just standing still and looking. Even with _not_ being interested in men, Bucky can appreciate how perfect Steve is, shirtless and gleaming. “It’s just...I feel kinda bad about….about interrupting you earlier. And...and that you had to go to a professional just to...just to get there. To remember how to...to come.” 

His cheeks turn faintly pink, and he smiles sheepishly. Bucky laughs, delighted by the frank language that he’s sure no one else living has ever heard from Steve. He’s heard Steve say much worse, back in the days of the Howling Commandos, but it seems much more unexpected here, in this context. The blush crawls down Steve’s neck and spreads slowly across his chest. Fascinated, Bucky reaches out to touch, pleased to find the pink places hotter than even the usual warmth of Steve’s pale-golden skin. The flush is warm enough to make Bucky’s fingers stop remembering the cold, and he spreads his hand across the swell of Steve’s left pectoral to soak the heat into his palm. 

“I just figured, if I’m the only one who...who can touch you...then maybe I could touch you...like...like this.” Steve unzips the front of Bucky’s hoodie and slides it off his shoulders. A complicated expression crosses his face when the empty left sleeve of Bucky’s t-shirt slips free, and Bucky touches a finger to Steve’s lips to keep him from saying anything. He reaches up to grab the collar of the shirt and pulls it over his head, taking the moment he’s hidden inside it to formulate his reply.

“I appreciate it,” he says gruffly, suddenly feeling embarrassed. Apparently he _has_ slipped so low as to take a pity screw. But he dares _anyone_ to go without as long as he has and not take up their best friend on an offer like this one. “I’m not...” he has no clear idea how to finish that sentence, so he lets it go and tries a different one. “I don’t know how men...how two men...ya know….”

Steve nods and huffs a soft, fond laugh.

“I _do_ know how. Have done it.” He tilts Bucky’s face up with his thumb again and kisses his lips softly. “There are a lot of ways we can get there, but I’m thinking we go back to what we were doing. It’s one of the best, yeah?

Bucky hadn’t realized how afraid he’s been until the fear melts away in a wash of relief. Of _course_ he should have trusted that Steve would both know what he’s doing and trust that he would guess how much it’d scare Bucky to even consider...that.

Steve folds gracefully to his knees again, pulling Bucky’s sweatpants down as he goes. He reaches up and carefully catches the waistband of the shorts, and starts to slide them down. The wet patch on the front sticks, dragging the silky material along in an erotic shiver of sensation, making Bucky start to perk up again from where he’d gone mostly soft. Steve gets the shorts all the way down Bucky’s legs and then waits while steps out of them. He watches Bucky’s cock shiver and fill, and he licks his lips, but, instead of leaning in and sucking, he just presses one soft kiss to Bucky’s thigh and then stands up again. Bucky sits back down on the couch, half because his legs don’t want to support him anymore and half just to have a good vantage point to watch Steve get naked.

Steve pushes his own soft pants down his legs, sweeping his underwear with them, and Bucky is shocked to see how incredibly hard he is, his erection nearly purple, the head shiny and wet. It makes Bucky’s mouth water, and he wonders if maybe he’s always been a little more curious about men than he ever thought or if it’s just Steve. Maybe it’s always been Steve, and Bucky never noticed. Maybe he’s just _starving_ for a little bit of action, and he’d react like this to _anyone_ he thought he could trust. He’s starting to care about the _why_ and the _how_ a lot less than the _when_. _Please_ and _yes_ are high on the list of things he’s interested in, too.

Steve walks closer, hips and shoulders swaying, and he climbs onto Bucky’s lap, bare and glowing in the soft light of the lamps around the room. Bucky cups his cheek and pulls him down for a kiss, and Steve tangles both hands back into Bucky’s hair and opens up to let Bucky’s tongue in. Bucky begins to shake as Steve’s chest slides against his, and he restlessly slides his hand across Steve’s skin: his shoulder, his arm, his side, back, and butt. His backside is a masterpiece, and Bucky cups it in his palm, kneads it with his fingers, scratches with his nails, making soft noises that are muffled by Steve’s mouth against his own. Steve pushes back against Bucky’s hand, and then he tucks himself down, folded up enough to press himself along Bucky’s entire front. Bucky’s thighs drop open without him being aware of having told them to do so, and it lets Steve’s balls drag over his cock. It’s...soft, somehow. Warm. Dry, but nice. 

They keep that up for a long time, holding and being held, exploring each other’s bodies with gentle hands, mouths moving together without urgency. Bucky finally has to break the kiss to suck in a few huge breaths. It’s not that he’s not breathing: he’s managing _that_ just fine. It’s that he’s starting to heat up on the inside, and, somehow, having Steve hovering over him like this just isn’t enough. He twists, and Steve, of course, knows what he wants. He twists with Bucky until they’re stretched out together on the couch. Steve is draped all the way down Bucky’s body, and his arms are tight around Bucky’s ribs. Bucky can’t decide if he likes his hand on Steve’s back or clutching at his hair more, so he keeps moving from one to the other. Steve does something with his hips that feels _incredible_ , and Bucky wraps both of his legs around Steve’s thighs to encourage him to do it again. 

Steve does, and it’s so good, _so_ good. Bucky thinks he could lie there on the couch– the fuzziness of the cushion below him rubbing against his back, the soft pillows cradling his head, his own hips cradling Steve– forever. The slick-tacky-hot feeling of Steve rubbing against him is _glorious_ , and it’s not nearly enough to get Bucky off. He’s grateful for that, because he wants this to last as long as it can. As close to eternity as he can get.

He grabs a handful of Steve’s hair again and pulls him into another kiss, swallowing up Steve’s panting moan. The kiss is wet and dirty, and Bucky thinks he could die right in that moment, and he’d feel complete. He finally breaks away from Steve’s mouth, still holding tightly to the back of Steve’s neck, and starts whispering in his ear.

“So glad you found me,” he says, and Steve’s breath hitches. “Glad you’re here with me. So happy that you can touch me. That you _want_ to touch me, in spite of...in spite of everything this body’s done.” 

Steve makes a tiny, choked off kind of sound that might be a sob, but Bucky can’t stop the words from spilling out now that he’s cracked open. There are so many things he’s wanted to tell Steve, things he’s _needed_ to say, but they’ve all been trapped inside. Even when he spilled out all of the Soldier’s misdeeds and the trauma of trying to get past it, _these_ were the things he couldn’t manage to say. 

“The Soldier dreamt about you sometimes. Could see your face. Felt things he didn’t understand when he did.” Bucky hitches one leg higher, onto half of Steve’s butt, and slides his hand down to grab the other muscular globe. “When he was told you were the next mission, he didn’t want to. _I_ didn’t want to. I was damned afraid of what’d happen when I saw you again. Thought you’d kill me. Hoped you’d touch me. Was afraid that it’d hurt if you did. Didn’t want to think about your hands and hurt at the same time. You were the only thing that ever frightened the Soldier. In all that time, your face was the only thing that didn’t scare _me_ , but he was so afraid of you that he wouldn’t let me near you.”

Bucky’s neck is suddenly wet, and he realizes that Steve’s crying openly on him. He moves his hand to the back of Steve’s head and kisses him again, hard and frantic. He’s got to stem the tide of confession, half because he doesn’t want his words to hurt Steve any more and half because he doesn’t want to do anything to stop what their bodies are doing together. 

The kiss gets hotter and sloppier, and Bucky forgets about the Soldier and being afraid and being cold and every bad thing that’s ever happened. He sucks at the tip of Steve’s tongue and cries out when Steve bites his lip, sharp and hard and so, so good. When he finally breaks away, it’s to start begging for more, and he doesn’t even know what more he wants. Steve, though, Steve always can see what Bucky means, even when Bucky can’t actually say the words. He props himself up on one arm, lips bumping against Bucky’s in something that’s too desperate to be called a kiss. He reaches between them, getting one of his big hands wrapped halfway around both of their erections. Bucky cries out, and he hurries to stuff his own hand down there to link his fingers with Steve’s, completing the tunnel. 

It takes them a few minutes to find a rhythm where they can work together to build the energy crackling between them. When they _do_ find it, though, it’s enough to make Bucky’s eyes try to roll back in his head. He doesn’t let them, though; he doesn’t want to miss a second of Steve’s face: eyelids fluttering; beautiful lips moving in a continuous string of choked curses; cheeks and forehead red. Steve’s eyes drop all the way shut, and his eyebrows and cheeks give a complicated little twitch, and then the slide gets slicker, and there’s wet heat all over Bucky’s wrist and forearm. 

It’s so much more intense than Bucky ever thought it could be with a guy, and his hips thrust up and then up again and then up once more, and he, too spills over his hand and Steve’s, adding to the mess on his stomach. Bucky doesn’t know anything more for at least a full minute after that. He finally comes back to himself to find Steve lying on top of him, spreading stickiness between them into something probably disgusting. Bucky would care more, but he’s too anxious to get more kisses from Steve, more holding. 

Steve is smiling a bit too much (and so is Bucky, but he doesn’t like to admit it) for the kissing to be terribly effective, but neither of them care. Bucky’s hand is starting to go to sleep from the weight of limp supersoldier, and he suspects Steve’s is too. 

“We should shower.” Steve occasionally, _very rarely_ , makes a good plan. Bucky kisses him, slow and deep, a reward for good decision-making and an encouragement to do it again. “And then we should go to bed. For actual sleep. I have to leave in about thirty-two hours. I _think_ I’ve found a way to get in touch with someone who can help with your Winter Soldier problem.”

Bucky’s heart gives a weird little skip, and he wonders if this is the same love he’s always had for Steve, or if the warmth and gratitude he would normally feel at Steve saying things like that has grown alarming because now they’ve had sex. He gives a soft huff of amusement and kisses Steve’s cheek, then the tip of his nose. He doesn’t actually care what this is, or what it could become. Not right now. He’s satisfied and warm, and he’s about to take another warm shower and then curl up against Steve’s heat to sleep. And then, after all of that, he’ll _still_ have more time before he goes under again. It’s the best kind of day he’s had in a _really_ long time. 

“Shower,” Bucky agrees and Steve climbs off and helps him up. He sees the empty plates they left on the food cart and amends the plan. “Then another supper. _Then_ sleep.”

Steve just laughs at him and leads the way to the bathroom. Bucky wonders, as he watches Steve’s ass while he walks down the hall, muscles flexing and relaxing, what it’s like to...to make love with a man. To be inside another man. To have Steve inside himself.

Partners, Steve had said. Not _women_ , but _partners_. Bucky starts picturing another man under Steve’s body, moaning his name and starting to lose his mind. Some man _other than Bucky_ clinging to Steve’s broad shoulders, clawing at his back. Another cock pushing into the super-strength heat of his body. Wearing the evidence of Steve’s pleasure across his belly and hand. 

Bucky doesn’t even know who any of those men were (he pointedly does _not_ think of the way Sam and Steve are so content together, so relaxed and happy), but he kind of hates any and all of them. Just because he doesn’t want Steve _like that_ doesn’t mean he can stand the thought of sharing Steve casually with just anyone. He knows it’s petty: just because other men _have_ wanted Steve that way, just because _Steve_ has wanted them back, it’s still no reason for Bucky to hate them. But...

He’s not _in love_ with Steve. That term doesn’t even begin to describe what exists between them. They were children together: loving each other unconditionally; fighting together during the week; ostensibly worshiping together on the weekends; chasing balls and girls and adventure together at all times. They were young men together: suffering through heartbreaking losses; struggling to keep house and home, mind and body together; clinging to each other because they had nothing else in the world to hold on to. They were brothers in arms together, fighting to save the free world, to end tyranny and fascism; fighting to keep people from going through the horrible experiments they both survived to become what they now were. 

Basically, they’ve already done in sickness and in health, until death did them part, and they came out the other side. 

Thing is...the thing is that they don’t need the _forsaking all others_ part. Steve could find himself a good lady and settle down to raise a whole litter of little half-super babies, and Bucky would love him just the same; he’d adore being an uncle to Steve’s brats. There wouldn’t be so much as a twinge of jealousy. He’s always wanted Steve to have nice things, even though Steve is a self-sacrificing idiot who can’t ever seem to believe that he deserves them. Bucky could even accept it if Steve found a man he could really love, be _in love with_ , to spend the rest of his life with. Bucky would stand up for Steve at his wedding and just be grateful that Steve got a happily ever after. 

If this evening, this kind of touch, this sex with Steve is a one-off, Bucky won’t break. 

He’s so incredibly grateful to Steve for giving him the opportunity to feel _like this_ again. He’d been so sure that sexual ecstasy was lost to him forever, destroyed by ice and brainwashing and the blood on his hands, both metal and flesh. On the couch, with his touch and his kisses, his words and the way he looked at Bucky, Steve made him feel hot and hungry, lusty and, best of all, _human_ again. It was the kind of miracle that’s always followed Steve: a feat akin to single-handedly storming a Nazi base.

There’s no word in any language he knows that’s big enough to describe what Steve means to him. He also wonders if he wants it to happen again. Is there such a thing as perfectly platonic people who have sex sometimes? He wouldn’t be surprised, in this strange future world. Sex is just so...obvious. Talked about in frank terms. Everywhere he’s gone since somewhere in the Sixties, sex has just _existed_ around him. 

Everywhere except for him. For the Soldier. For the battered body they both shared. 

“Bucky?” Steve’s already under the flow of hot water, and his voice voice is muted by the sound of the shower. Bucky wonders how long he’s been staring blankly at Steve’s naked body, picturing him with other partners. Picturing him with Bucky himself. “You okay?”

Steve's broad shoulders gleam and shine under the overhead lights, shimmering under the fine coat of water. His face is still post-orgasm soft, lips still swollen and tender-looking. There's a red flush to his cheeks and chin and neck from Bucky's beard, and the sight makes Bucky's throat go dry. He swallows hard, trying to get enough moisture in his mouth to speak.

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Just kinda….” He lets the rest of the sentence die, not sure where he was going with it, anyway. He crosses the bathroom quickly and reached out to put a hesitant hand on Steve’s chest, one nail scratching at the drying, flaky mess that they both have all over them. He’s not sure if this is allowed now, this kind of intimate touching. He wants to ask what the rules are, so he doesn’t do something wrong. So he doesn’t give Steve the wrong idea or make Steve think _Bucky_ has the wrong idea.

But Steve, beautiful, perfectly understanding Steve, just covers the back of Bucky’s hand with both of his own and backs further under the shower spray, pulling Bucky with him. He rests his hands on Bucky’s waist, drawing him close enough to kiss, so they’re both under the water, and their mouths rest together, close-lipped and soft. 

“Don’t overthink it,” Steve tells him softly, and then he licks along the side of Bucky’s neck in a way that raises goosebumps. He kisses the scarred, ugly skin around what’s left of the murder-arm, and Bucky sighs and relaxes. “Buck, I _know_ it‘s just–” Steve bites gently at the top of Bucky’s chest– “just this. Just now. And...and we _can_ , I mean later. If you, if you need to...or just want to...we can do it again. Do more. Do less. Whatever you want. Whatever _we_ want.”

Bucky wraps his arm around Steve’s shoulders and pulls him close, hugging as hard as he can, feeling tears well up in his own eyes. He shuts his lids quickly to keep them from running over. Steve _does_ understand. And doesn’t….and doesn’t think this means more or less than it does. For all that Captain America can get on Bucky’s very last nerve, Steve is still the most amazing human being Bucky’s ever known. He squeezes harder, hit for just a second by the terrifying thought that Steve could be ripped away from him. Again. A weird buzzing fills his ears, and he shakes and holds on and tries not to cry.

When he finally is aware of the warmth of the water again, he also becomes aware of a voice, murmuring in his ear. It’s the one thing about Steve that didn’t change much. Less breathy, to be sure, but otherwise perfectly recognizable as Steve.

“Easy there, Buck.” Steve is stroking down Bucky’s back with one big hand, and suddenly Bucky remembers being sick– sometimes from drink, sometimes from food that didn’t agree with him– and Steve stroking his back, just the same. The hand was much smaller then, but so was Steve. So was Bucky. The words and the touch settle him as easily now as back then when the world was young and so were they. 

“I’ve got ya,” Steve whispers, and he sways, just a little, rocking to a song only he can hear, dancing under the hot water. “I’m sorry–” his voice hitches, and Bucky noses in under Steve’s jaw and kisses the side of his neck. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for so long. I’m sorry I didn’t know...didn’t know sooner. Soon enough to–” he chokes on another sob-like sound, and Buck can’t take the grief and guilt anymore. 

He steps forward, pushing Steve’s back against the tile and kissing him hard. He grips Steve’s hip, knowing his grip is far too tight, but Steve just opens to him, going soft and pliant and letting Bucky absolutely dominate him. It’s heady and dizzying, and Bucky has one flash of panic because Steve has always, _always_ been the one in control. Even when Steve was half his size and couldn’t run more than a block before he had to lie down, he was the center of Bucky’s world and anything he wanted Bucky to do was as binding as law. To have their roles so absolutely backward is terrifying and overwhelming and miraculous, and Bucky grips Steve’s ribs and clings, looking for something solid as his entire world tumbles down and tries to remake itself.

Steve tilts his head back and groans, soft and low and needy, and then everything solidifies, and Bucky _needs_ to hold and bite and kiss and devour. He slots his thigh between Steve’s and pushes in to kiss him more, deeper. Harder. Maybe if they keep moving, keep this...this whatever it is between them going, maybe they won’t have to stop and look behind them. Maybe they can stop trying to look forward.

Maybe, if they keep it going, they can just _be_. Be there in that moment, _together_ , and they can just stop worrying about each other for a few damn minutes. 

Steve makes that tiny little sound again, and Bucky smiles against his lips and steps back, reaching for the bar of soap and smirking at Steve’s lust-dark eyes.

“Guess we better hurry up and get clean. Seems rude to waste His Majesty’s water like this.” He drops the soap back on the little shell and reaches for Steve’s belly, grinning further when Steve gives his most unimpressed glare. Bucky just winks at him and says, “Aww, you love me and you know it.”

“Yes.” The word is sharp and decisive, and it’d almost be perfect if Steve didn’t open his smart little mouth and keep going. “Though God knows why, because you’ve been a pain in my ass since the Thirties.” 

“You’ve been a pain in mine since the twenties,” Bucky answers easily, knowing the pattern of this argument even if he can’t remember all the words. “And yet you’re still my best friend. This probably says something bad about me.”

“‘Course it does,” Steve snorts, going smug and horsey again. “It says you’re a pain in my ass.”

The next words fall out of Bucky’s mouth without checking with his brain first.

“I’d like to be.” 

Steve chokes on air, wheezes, then starts to laugh. It’s so infectious that some of Bucky’s shock wears off, and he starts laughing, too.

“Okay, Buck,” Steve leans his forehead on Bucky’s shoulder, still chuckling. “We have _got_ to either find a way to laugh like this outside of the shower, or else get a padded bathroom so we’re not in danger of slipping and falling.”

Bucky loops his arm over the back of Steve’s neck and kisses his cheek. It’s the least sexual thing they’ve done in the last hour or more, but it feels _so_ intimate, far more intimate than having their tongues in each other’s mouths or rubbing together until they spilled and mixed on Bucky’s belly. Steve shivers against his chest. Bucky bites his own lip, not sure if he’s trying to hold words in, keep himself from crying from the sheer intensity of the feelings welling up in his chest, or if he’s just losing his damn mind.

“Come on, Stevie.” He kisses the side of Steve’s neck. “Let’s get cleaned up and get out of here. I’m starving.”

“I see whatever Zola gave you didn’t stop you from being a bottomless pit, Barnes.” Steve grins at him and grabs the soap. He manages to build up some foam much more quickly than Bucky could, having two hands. He transfers some of the soap to Bucky’s hand, and then reaches for Bucky’s stomach. 

Apparently cleaning each other is a thing they do now. Bucky thinks that _this_ is the thing that crosses the line, but he marches right on with Steve by his side. Or, well, he rubs soap all over Steve’s glorious stomach and wishes he could purr like an _actual_ cat while Steve does the same to him. 

“You were wrong.” Steve says, carefully smoothing the lather over the ruined skin around Bucky’s metal shoulder. “Earlier.”

“I’m never wrong.” Bucky’s only half-listening, and he answers automatically. He’s so relaxed from sex and warm water and rediscovered easiness between Steve and himself that he’s just kinda floating in a happy place. He tries to remember the last time he felt this comfortable around Steve. Before the Soldier, for sure. Maybe even before the war. Before the serum put a wall between them, made from righteousness and the burden of command, too high to climb over, with only tiny cracks through which he could see his Steve. 

“You said that, if having you was something I’d been dreaming about, you’d have figured it out.” Steve turns Bucky under the water, so they’re face to face, and the shower flow is cascading over Bucky’s head. “I _have_ thought about it. About you. And me. Especially before–” He breaks off, and Bucky reaches up to scrub the water off his face with the back of his hand so he can open his eyes and see Steve’s face.

Steve is half-turned away, face down, watching the water swirl into the drain. Bucky reaches out to turn Steve’s face so that he can see Steve’s eyes. They’re so blue in the overhead light, and Bucky can see all the green flecks he sometimes forgets about. For just a moment, he pictures those eyes staring out of a paler, thinner face. He remembers this look, the one look he never quite understood, but he _did_ know was entirely for him. He remembers how it always stole his breath, made feelings he wasn’t allowed to have stir in his belly. Steve’s still absolutely beautiful, but he was so exquisitely _pretty_ before.

 _Before_ is such a complex word for the two of them. They’ve had so many things _before_ and _after_ and then _before and after_ again. Bucky could catalogue them, if he wanted to, but he’s too content to bother.

Instead of thinking of ice and death and loss, he presses the pad of his thumb to Steve’s bottom lip; it hasn’t changed much, not even with all the changes the rest of Steve has undergone. This mouth is just the same as ever it was when they were children and young men and soldiers and Captain America versus The Winter Soldier. He thinks it might have been that, the shape of Steve’s perfect, pretty mouth that he almost remembered, back when he’d first seen Steve again and, even without knowing his name, had known that he was _important_.

Steve’s mouth starts moving again, and Bucky forces himself to listen to the words, instead of just watching the way they look coming off of Steve’s lips.

“– and I’d wonder what it’d be life if you’d ever kissed me like one of your girls. Or hold me close and dance with me. I wondered why I...why I got hard when you’d crawl into bed smelling like sex and drink and smoke and perfume from a dancehall.” Steve looks away, and his eyelashes fan over his cheeks, glittering with water droplets. “I always thought it was just because I knew what you’d been doing. But...but later, when I was touring with the USO, I found out that some of the girls kissed other girls that way. That some of the men that toured with us took men into their beds for more than keeping warm. And then I...and then I figured out that I wanted that, too. Sometimes. But not with just _any_ man. I...I finally realized how much I’d wanted _you_.”

“How come you never told me?” Bucky asks gently. He slides his hand down Steve’s side to rest it on Steve’s sharp hipbone, his thumb tracing tiny patterns against the soft, smooth skin there.

“I knew you _didn’t_ feel that way about...about men.” _Especially me_ goes unsaid, but Bucky hears it anyway, and it makes his heart ache strangely. “And I didn’t want to make you mad or...or make you pull away from me. So I put it away until I’d nearly forgotten about it. Well and….” Steve swallows hard, and his eyes go warm and distant. “And I’d met Peggy by then, and she just…”

Bucky nods. Steve _loves_ Peggy. That remains one of the foundations of who and what he is. First time he’d seen Peggy and Steve look at each other, he’d known that Steve loved Peggy and Peggy loved Steve. Bucky had hated her at first, until he found out that she loved the same Steve that Bucky did: the short, awkward, mouthy, determined, pig-headed, short-tempered, beautiful, perfect little guy from Brooklyn. As soon as Peggy got _that_ across, Bucky forgave Steve for loving her, forgave Peggy for being the dame that finally won Steve’s heart, and then _he’d_ fallen in love with her– although not romantically– right alongside Steve. 

He’d read up on her post-war exploits, and knew how good of a match she’d have been for Steve, if they’d ever gotten their chance. Bucky wonders, occasionally, what would have happened if he and Steve had neither one found the future through serums and ice. How Steve and Peggy would have taken on the world, and he’d have been running right alongside them, trying to contain the damage and watching their foolhardy backs that they never could seem to keep an eye on themselves. Beautiful idiots, the both of them.

“Anyway,” Steve says, after they’ve both paused long enough to conjure up a ghost Peggy in the shower with them. Bucky starts to feel claustrophobic until Steve shakes his head as if to dispel her shadow. The shower is crowded enough with Steve and Cap and Bucky and the Soldier and all of their baggage and history. “Anyway, it didn’t matter by then, and then….”

And then Bucky fell. And then Steve went into the ice. And then Bucky got a murder-arm and Steve got defrosted. And then all hell broke loose and…

And now they’re here.

“I still don’t feel that way about men.” Bucky says it blandly, but even he can hear his Brooklyn coming out. Steve laughs and kisses the tip of his nose and laughs again. Bucky sniffs and shakes his hair back under the water before he asks, “What?”

“So how _do_ you feel about men?” Steve’s whole face is wrapped up in the same challenging-little-shit expression he’s worn since he was six. 

“Not men,” Bucky tells him, drawing on the place where the Soldier always sits silently in the corner of his mind to keep his face perfectly blank. “Just one man. You. I feel about you like–” He reaches out and, with as little sexual energy as a human can muster, rubs his hand vigorously against Steve’s belly.

Steve squeaks in surprise and steps backward, slipping as he does, and begins to fall. Before he knows what he’s doing, Bucky dives forward, loops his arm around Steve’s waist, and shoves his shoulder under Steve’s head, dipping him the best he can while he’s down an arm.

“May I have this dance?” he asks, just to be a jerk. 

“God, please,” Steve whispers, and he does something acrobatic and graceful to push himself to his feet and pulls Bucky close, arms circling his neck, and then he kisses the _hell_ out of him.

It’s still strange how not strange it feels.

“Shit, Stevie,” Bucky chokes out when they finally pull apart, a lump the size of Europe in his throat. 

Steve shivers in his arms, and Bucky’s hard again, and it’s all so much, and everything is so damned overwhelming. Bucky sucks in air, trying to push away all the thoughts that suddenly pop up, trying to get his attention. He spent so long not being able to think, and he has refused to stop a single thought that’s crossed his mind since he got it back. But now….now there are too many of them all jabbering at once, and he doesn’t _want_ to think. He just wants to feel, and it’s _so damned frustrating_ that his stupid broken brain and his stupid broken body won’t ever cooperate! He grabs at his hair, turning away, and hears a deep, animalistic whine that he realizes drags out of his own throat. He panics, just a little, and the Soldier comes out of his corner, pushing Bucky behind him, taking over their body until the panic subsides, and the cool pressure of tile against his butt pulls him back to the present.

He realizes he’s sitting on the floor, in the corner of the bathroom furthest from the shower, and Steve is kneeling several feet away, trying to keep him from feeling trapped.

 _God_ , but he’s grateful for Steve and for all the things that Sam taught him. 

“I’m okay,” he says, wiping his hand over his face to push his hair back. “I’d like a towel though. And maybe some clothes?”

Steve nods and carefully stands up. Bucky manages to get to his feet before Steve has gotten the towel, and he’s waiting, arm held wide, when Steve walks toward him with the terrycloth. He ignores the towel, grabbing for Steve’s shoulder to pull him into a tight hug. Steve holds him carefully, and Bucky _hates_ the caution after the ease that they’d managed to create between them. He lets go sooner than he’d like, because it just makes him feel hopeless to feel Steve so tense. Steve turns away to reach for his own towel, and Bucky leaves him to it, heading down the short hallway to the bedroom. He starts digging through Steve’s dufflebag, and he’s just made his selections when Steve walks in.

Bucky doesn’t startle when Steve clears his throat; he knew he was there, could hear him coming down the hall. 

“We’re going to bed,” he tells Steve, not turning around. “We’re going to bed, and you’re gonna snuggle up close, just like you used to, and then I’m going to be really damned glad that I don’t have to listen to you wheeze and snore all night long. We’ll sleep, we’ll wake up, and we’ll both be just fine.”

“Buck…” Steve sounds like he feels helpless, and that just tightens the knot in Bucky’s stomach.

“I _don’t_ want to talk about it, okay?”

“I just thought we were going to have some food first. That’s all.” Steve is obviously lying; he wants to talk. Captain America is a lot of things, including a surprisingly good poker player, but he can’t lie to Bucky. Steve never could lie to Bucky. He’s worried, and now Bucky is mad at himself for breaking the mood. 

It had just started to look like he was about to have sex that involved everyone having fun for only the second time in three-quarters of a century. But now Steve has backed so far away, emotionally, that Bucky’s not sure he’ll even get another kiss before he goes back into long-term cold storage. He takes a deep breath to keep from crying in frustration and turns around, pulling a t-shirt over his head.

Steve’s back the same soft pants he’d worn earlier, shirtless, a few drops of water still standing out on his shoulders and chest. Does it _mean_ something that Bucky kinda wants to lick them off, one by one? He doesn’t know, but he does cross to the doorway where Steve’s leaning and wrap his arm around Steve’s waist. If Steve won’t come to him, he’ll go to Steve and see if he can’t get them back to where they were. Single-handedly, as it were.

_Ha._

“I think it was just the water and the sound and the fact that I seem to be, you know, _attracted_ to a man.” He kisses the side of Steve’s neck, and Steve relaxes a little. “Or maybe it’s less that I’m attracted to a man than it is that I’m attracted to you. You’re the last person in the world I woulda expected to end up here with.”

“Wow, I feel so...special.” Steve’s got his eyebrow up; Bucky doesn’t even have to look to tell. He can _hear_ the sarcastic little shit in Steve’s voice. God, does he love this version of Little Shit Steve. He kisses Steve’s shoulder, letting his lips linger on the heat of Steve’s skin while Steve goes on, dramatic and pretending to be offended. “And here I thought ours was a true and pure love!”

“It is.” Bucky shoves him out of the way and stalks toward the kitchen. “But the sex is just sex.”

Steve gives a thoughtful little hum, and Bucky glances back to see him shrug. He catches up to Bucky and hip-bumps him into the wall. Bucky bumps him back.

“Fair enough.” Steve’s lips twist in that little half-smile that he’s always done. “About the sex. But can we do it again, anyway?”

“Let’s discuss the possibilities over a meal.” Bucky looks out a window at the night-dark sky. “What the hell time is it, anyway? Is this supper or a midnight snack? Cryofreeze plays hell with my internal clock.”

After determining that the meal counts as a rather _late_ supper, Bucky leaves Steve to put something together while he goes to straighten up the sitting room. He collects all of their clothing from before off the floor, putting the socks back on his feet and the hoodie over his fresh t-shirt before carrying everything else back to dump in Steve’s ridiculous laundry bag. It all smells vaguely musky, hints of what they’d done on the couch before their shower, and Bucky inhales as he walks down the hall. 

Yeah, he can get behind going again with Steve. Not like there’s anyone _else_ in the world he trusts to touch him, intimately or otherwise. He also suspects there aren’t many other than himself that could withstand the full force of turned on Supersoldier. He thinks that he and Steve could come to a very agreeable arrangement. 

Not, not really like…like a _couple_ or whatever the term is now. But as a pair, just the way they’ve always been. But with added dirty stuff. Really, what could it possibly change between them? He can’t love Steve _more_ ; he already loves Steve with everything inside him. First Steve was his best friend, then Steve saved him from Zola, then they fought together, then Steve saved him _again_ by taking down HYDRA, which let Bucky get free. And now Steve has saved him again, even turning against his team and the rest of the world to keep Bucky safe. After all of that, there’s _no one_ that can ever hold the same level of importance in Bucky’s life. There’s no one else that could ever understand all he’s been through and all that he’s lost. 

Maybe it’ll change how often Bucky’s awake. Steve can come back to him and wake him up, they can spend a few days together at a time, maybe. That means that Bucky can spend some more time watching movies, reading books, surfing the internet to find out everything he’s either missed or been lied to about while the Soldier was in charge of their body. It also means he could get more time with Steve, to just be around the guy more. Maybe then they’ll be able to get past the fragile times, when Steve treats Bucky like something that could break. 

One thing that adding sex to their friendship _won’t_ change is the way they sleep when they’re together. They tried sleeping in separate beds a few times when they were heading toward Wakanda and the cryo chamber. Every time they did, though, they woke each other up with their nightmares. After lying in silently in the dark, knowing the other was awake, one of them would crawl into the other’s bed so they could get some rest, knowing that someone else had their back. One time, when even Steve being _right there_ hadn’t kept the dreams at bay, Steve had curled around him, holding him close. 

Bucky has thought of that night more than is decent, and maybe now he’s starting to understand why.

One thing that _would_ change for Bucky is his understanding of his own body. Steve touching him on the couch had brought back good memories of what his body had done before– the way he’d touched women and been touched in return, the kisses he’d known, his _first_ kiss. Bucky makes a mental note to write each one of them down in his notebook as soon as he gets a minute. But more than the memories that came back, the sensations that Steve’s hands and lips woke under his skin made Bucky feel less like a passenger in his own skin and more like...more like an entire human. He didn’t have to look to know that the cock in Steve’s hand was Bucky’s. Or that the hand on Steve’s cock was _also_ Bucky’s.

The orgasm that whited out his vision and left his nose and toes tingling for some time afterward was all Bucky’s own, too. And it was _amazing_.

He finishes straightening the cushions and is halfway through folding the blanket one-handed when Steve walks in with two plates piled high with things that smell _heavenly_. Steve shoots him a guilty look and tries to take over the folding, but Bucky shoos him away and manages it on his own. He feels a weirdly potent sense of pride over the accomplishment and tries to tell himself that it’s a little excessive. He looks up and Steve’s bright eyes are echoing the look, though, so he gives himself a mental pat on the back and drops the blanket on a chair. Steve hands him a plate as he sits down on the couch, and Bucky can barely decide what to try first. 

They eat in companionable silence except for Steve identifying the foods on Bucky’s plate. Some things are spicy, some are made of things Bucky can identify; a potato is a potato in any decade, and cheese has either gotten way better over the years, or he and Steve only ate something that was _not_ cheese as children. Really, either one is entirely possible. Steve laments–in long and poetic language–Bucky’s lack of experience with spicy orange things that turn out to be bits of battered and fried chicken with some kind of hot sauce on them. Bucky is still working on his ninth one when Steve ducks out of the room. 

He returns a few minutes later with a sketch pad on his knee, and suddenly everything feels _right_. Bucky moves on to spring rolls (that he can’t entire figure out why they’re called such, since they don’t _look_ like springs, and he’d be alarmed if the vegetables inside only could be found in the spring, since it’s not actually spring anywhere in the world right then) and Steve is still drawing. He flips the page and goes nonverbal for awhile. Bucky amuses himself by making faces at the top of Steve’s head. 

Clearly, the serum didn’t do anything for Steve’s inability to pay attention to anything other than his art when he’s busy drawing.

“I heard Captain America punched a horse once,” Bucky says, propping his feet on the low table in front of the couch and wiggling his toes. “Supposedly it was a Nazi horse. I’ve always wondered if the Super Serum let him speak horse. Because, if it didn’t, how did he know the horse was a Nazi and not just a family man, taking whatever work he could find?”

Steve hums noncommittally, and Bucky decides to throw himself into storytelling, seeing how absurd he can make it. It’s been his favorite method of Steve-baiting since he was about thirteen years old: find the most _random_ things to say and see how long it takes Steve to get confused enough to ask questions. 

It’s been _decades_ since Bucky spun a good yarn, and he decides to go for outlandish from the start and see where he ends up. It won’t be up to his past standards, he’s certain, but he’ll give it his best shot and maybe he’ll get to practice more in the near future.

“Once upon a time, there was a brave knight named Stevie.” He pronounces the k at the beginning of knight, and Steve doesn’t huff in protest. Still not listening then. Bucky stretches his neck one way and then the other until it cracks. “Brave Sir Stevie was called upon to rescue a princess in a tower. Princess...Sam.”

Just because Bucky doesn’t really _want_ to know exactly what Sam has been to Steve doesn’t mean he can’t be a little vindictive for what he suspects. 

“Princess Sam was being held prisoner by the big scary monster named….” Bucky pauses to eat another of the wacky potato boats with the cheese and bacon while he tries to decide who to make the villain of his story. “Iron Man.” He says it decisively, and then shoots a guilty look at Steve. 

Steve finally told Bucky a little more about Tony's background, and Bucky genuinely _did_ feel sorry for the guy. He also didn’t hold any of the trying-to-kill-the-Winter-Soldier against him. The part where Tony had turned on Steve was another matter; _no one_ gets to try to kill Steve on Bucky’s watch.

“So tiny, brave Sir Stevie was too small for real armor,” Bucky watches the end of Steve’s pencil waving in the air, trying to decipher what he’s drawing; he never could tell, and he still can’t now. “And since he couldn’t get on the big suit, he put a pot on his head and stole his best friend’s winter coat, grabbed a trash can lid for a shield, and took off to rescue a princess. He got to the tower, and Iron Man told him that he can’t possibly rescue Princess Sam. ‘Cause Princess Sam is going to be his lunch, ya know? But Stevie, he doesn’t let people go around just eating princesses all willy-nilly, so he throws down his gardening glove gauntlet, and says he’ll fight Iron Man for the Princess.”

He glances over to see if Steve has started listening yet, but Steve’s pencil is still moving, and his eyebrows are crunched together in concentration. He’s absolutely adorable, and Bucky wishes he could draw so he could sketch what he sees of Tiny Steve in Captain America’s face right there. 

“But Iron Man is too powerful for him.” Bucky shakes his head with exaggerated sadness. “So Stevie is locked in the tower and Princess Sam is lunch.”

Steve hums a small agreeable sound, and Bucky stiffles a snicker.

“And that’s when King Bucky has to come to the rescue.” He takes another bite of the spicy chicken things. He wonders why they’re called buffalo wings, because buffalo don’t have wings and aren’t, as far as Bucky knows, spicy. “King Bucky fights off the evil Iron Man and climbs the tower to rescue the tiny Sir Stevie. His kiss wakes Sir Stevie from enchanted sleep, and they ride away to live happily ever after. The end.”

“Sam wouldn’t get stuck in a tower,” Steve says blandly. He holds the pencil carefully away from the paper while Bucky pummels him with a throw pillow, but he doesn’t look away from the sketchpad. “He’d just fly out. Besides, you’re the one who’s been sleeping in a tower. If anything, _you’re_ the princess, and I’m the one who gets to kiss you awake.”

“You devious little _asshole_!” Bucky’s delighted, but he can’t let it show too much. Steve’s learned to keep a straight face while ignoring Bucky’s stories. He feels like he’s watching a child grow up or something.

Steve looks up with a grin, and then his mouth goes crooked and his eyes darken. He carefully closes the sketchbook and sets it and the pencil on the table, out of harm’s way. Bucky’s breath hitches at the way Steve is looking at him, and then Steve moves, fast and resolute. He grabs Bucky by the arm on one side and the shoulder on the other, heaving him close enough to hug. Of course, being _hugged_ by Steve means that his mouth is just _right there_ , and it’s such a pretty mouth…

Bucky tips his head to meet him in a kiss, and Steve sighs happily, sinking down and back onto the couch until he’s lying under Bucky, arms wrapped tightly around Bucky’s waist. It’s a little awkward from this position, since Bucky needs to use his arm to hold himself up. He’s not sure he likes it, since he can’t slide his fingers through Steve’s hair or trace his jaw and neck with his thumb. He brushes his tongue against Steve’s bottom lip, and then pushes up and away.

“Bedroom,” he growls, frustrated and tired and _wanting_. He doesn’t even know exactly what it is that he wants, but he knows he wants it _a lot_ and _badly_ and _now_. Steve is watching him, all eyebrow scrunched and confused, and Bucky suddenly realizes that the tone came out mostly Soldier and not very Bucky. “Come _on_ , Stevie! I want to lie down so I can hold you some, and I’m not going to want to get up again once I’m horizontal.”

 _Especially not if we’re naked_ , he thinks but doesn’t say. He stands up and holds his hand out to Steve.

Steve sits up and pulls Bucky close, hugging him around the legs and pressing his face to Bucky’s stomach. 

“You know you don’t have to… _we_ don’t have to do anything, right?” Steve noses the hem of Bucky’s jacket up and kisses the thin fabric of the t-shirt over his stomach. “Really, Buck. Before, that was...it was just about perfect, okay? It’s enough. Just...just having you back is enough.”

Bucky cups Steve’s cheek tipping his chin up. Steve looks so damned earnest, with his eyes all bright blue and his mouth pink and puffy. Bucky can’t help but lean down to kiss him again, and then he grabs Steve’s hand and pulls him to his feet. 

“Steve, _being_ back is enough. But being back and being with you?” Bucky shakes his head and looks down, blinking hard to keep the scratchiness from taking over his eyes again. He _will not_ cry. Not now. “Being back _and_ being with you is like...is like some kind of miracle. And...and I gotta ask you.” 

He stops there, suddenly nervous about the actual asking part.

“Ask me anything, Buck,” Steve answers softly. He kisses Bucky’s forehead and hugs him gently but firmly. “You know you can ask me anything. Always.”

“Did you mean it?” It’s a little oblique, but Bucky’s afraid to approach the question too directly. “About...about having thought about me...that… _that_ way?”

“Of course.” Steve sighs, a little frustrated and then he huffs a bitter little laugh. “I mean, have you _seen_ yourself? Apparently I find people with dark hair, beautiful lips, and attitude problems absolutely irresistible.”

“So you’re saying I gave you your type?” Bucky brushes his nose against Steve’s cheek and smiles. “Look, Stevie. What’s the word they use now for two guys together?”

“Boyfriends? Partners?” Steve is still stiff in Bucky’s embrace, but he seems more curious and less nervous than he was a few minutes ago. “Why?”

“I’m not sure...I don’t think we’re meant to be _that_.” Bucky kisses Steve’s cheek. “I mean, I don’t think...it just doesn’t….” He trails off, not sure where that sentence is trying to go.

“Right.” Steve heaves a relieved-sounding sigh and hugs Bucky ferociously hard for just one second. “Oh good. I mean, I don’t think–”

Bucky cuts him off with a kiss. Now that he’s certain they’re on the same page, he’s just _done_ with talking. Not counting one suck job and Steve’s tug on the couch earlier in the evening, it’s been pushing eighty years since he last had sex, and he _wants_ with a ferocity that almost frightens him. His past lack of interest in doing...doing… _that_ certainly isn't informing his current interests. Just the thought of pushing into the heat of Steve’s body has him hard enough to ache. He allows one brief contemplation of doing it the _other_ way and then find he can’t quite push the image away. Honestly, he’s not sure if he’s just aroused in general or if it is that thought specifically; either way, he feels an odd, eager clench in his gut at the thought of Steve having him that way. 

_Up the ass_. He makes himself face the thought, in hopes that it will cool him off enough that he’ll have some hope of lasting when he _does_ get Steve into bed. But, _nope_. Still hard enough to pound nails, and now his skin is pimpling with goosebumps, already eager for Steve’s warm hands to touch all over. 

He keeps kissing Steve, lips and chin and nose starting to catch on Steve’s evening shadow of beard. It’s amazing and perfect and hot and welcome...and Bucky wants it to stop _right now_ so that he can get Steve spread across the bed, naked, and then he can…. Okay, he’s not sure what exactly what _and then_ , and he doesn’t really care. He starts backing toward the hall, his arm around Steve’s waist, pulling him along. Steve makes some little pleased sound in the back of his throat, and then starts scrabbling at the bottom of Bucky’s jacket, clearly trying to pull it up and off. Bucky pulls back just far enough to let him, and then grabs the back of Steve’s collar and heaves, yanking it over Steve’s head. Steve fights his way free of the shirt and reaches for Bucky with both hands. He gets the t-shirt Bucky’s wearing off, throwing it somewhere behind him, and then he flings himself back into their interrupted kiss.

It’s all bare chest to bare chest, then, and Bucky thinks that it can’t possibly get better than this, and then Steve does some kind of ninja move and ends up walking out of his pants. Bucky is both thrilled and frustrated, because, on the one hand, there’s _so much naked Steve._ On the other hand, though, is that Bucky only _has_ one hand, and he can’t decide where to put it first. 

Never one to be shy, Bucky decides to go for the main event, so to speak. He pushes Steve against the wall with his chest and angles his own body so he can get his hand between them, wrapping his fingers around the hot, hard length of Steve’s erection. He’s only touched another man– touched _Steve_ , in fact– there a few times. Long ago, in his nearly forgotten past, when Steve was so sick that one winter that he nearly died. Bucky had lugged Steve down the long hall to the bathroom on their floor, propping him up as he’d helped him aim. More than once, in fact. Later that week, when Steve was too weak to manage hold his head up while being carried, Bucky had rolled him onto his side on the bed and held Steve’s penis over a bowl. 

_This_ time is nothing like that was.

Steve is healthy and huge all over, not that he was terribly small _there_ before. He’d been just as long, and only a touch thinner. Bucky isn’t sure, since he’d never felt Steve when he was hard. Before. Doing _this_ doesn’t have any of the same connotations that doing _that_ had. There’s nothing clinical in Bucky’s touch, and there’s nothing embarrassed in Steve’s response.

Bucky rubs with his thumb, keeping his grip firm and unmoving with his fingers, and Steve’s head thumps back against the wall. His wide chest shudders with a deep, shaking breath, and Bucky pulls up with his fingers, watching the way Steve’s foreskin bunches just beneath the red, damp head. He let’s go and gets a small sound of complaint, but then he cups Steve’s balls, wondering if it’s anything like touching his own. Steve’s hips rock forward into his touch, and it’s both incredibly familiar and entirely different. Steve’s blond hair is sparser and softer than Bucky’s dark hair down there, just a frizz around Steve’s groin. It’s so silky that Bucky can’t stop running his fingertips over it: the thin wisps on his balls and around the base of his cock, up the thicker curls at the base of his belly, along the fine trail up to Steve’s navel and then back down. Steve is panting now, shivering, and Bucky kisses the side of his neck, wet and sloppy. 

“Buck, please…” Steve’s eyes are shut, and he still has his head pushing back against the wall as if it’s the only thing holding him up. “God, I want…”

“What do you want, Stevie?” Bucky wraps his hand back around Steve’s cock, rubbing his thumb over the tip to collect the tiny bead of clear fluid. “Come on, tell me what you want.”

“ _Everything_.” 

The word comes out so breathy that Bucky hears _his_ Steve in it: the little guy with the chesty cough and the difficulty speaking when the weather got too hot or too cold. His own chest fills up with a heat that nearly stops his own breath. Maybe this is love, or maybe it’s just previously unknown lust. Maybe it means something, or maybe it just the way that Bucky’s finding his very own Steve, the most important person in his entire world, in this space where they can touch and hold and kiss and...and do these things to and with each other.

“Anything,” he whispers, releasing Steve’s erection in favor of wrapping him up in a hug. “Anything you need from me.”

Steve tucks his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck and inhales shakily. He doesn’t say anything more, but he does slide Bucky’s sweatpants down his legs, slow and steady. Bucky shivers at the air on his bare rear, even though it’s neither particularly warm or cold. It’s just that, tonight excepting, he hasn’t spent a lot of time naked in recent years (and by recent he means at least seven decades). Europe was mostly too cold, during the war. And the Soldier dressed for tactical advantage; Bucky has one wild image of the Winter Soldier busting in on someone, naked and silent, but he swallows down the snicker that tries to escape. Not laughing is surprisingly easy, because Steve suddenly leads him through the bedroom door and pushes him, gently but firmly, toward the bed.

“Can I blow you, Buck?” Steve is staring at Bucky’s crotch like it’s something sacred, and Bucky thinks he might be getting harder under the weight of Steve’s gaze. “Please, I just…”

No man would say no to something like that, especially not with the way Steve keeps licking his lips that are already shining and red. Bucky drops down to the edge of the bed, spreading his thighs and leaning back, holding himself up with his arm. 

“Be my guest,” he says, trying to project relaxed confidence. 

He loses his entire facade of calm when Steve drops to his knees and pushes in between Bucky’s legs. Bucky chokes on his gasp, and Steve grins up at him before leaning forward to lick. The first touch of his tongue is soft and rough and wet and hot, and Bucky thinks he could let go from nothing else. Steve keeps looking up at him, and Bucky bites his bottom lip. He can’t keep looking at Steve’s worshipful, intent face. If he watches the way those big blue eyes are watching him, it’s all going to be over too entirely too fast. He wants it to last.

Bucky _remembers_ getting blowjobs before. He knows he got a couple jotted down in his notebook, specific incidents that were good enough or unique enough (and in one case _bad_ enough) to stand out. But he doesn’t remember it _ever_ feeling like this one. Maybe it’s his memory, or maybe it’s just that there’s something so _surreal_ about having Captain America on his knees. Maybe it’s been too long, or maybe it’s because he’s got _Steve_ , and he loves Steve and Steve loves him. 

Maybe he’s thinking too much.

Steve wraps his lips around the head of Bucky’s erection and sucks lightly before he swirls his tongue around, and Bucky’s eyes nearly roll back in his head. Steve hums, just a little murmur of pleasure and the vibrations around him are almost too much. It’s so good, and Bucky wants to let go and fill up Steve’s smart mouth and he wants it to keep going and he just…. 

“You keep that up, and it’s gonna be over _real_ soon,” he tells Steve, and Steve laughs around him again. The bass notes from Steve’s chesty chuckle drill straight into Bucky’s balls.

He wants to touch– Steve’s face, his hair, his shoulder, _anything_ – but his arm is all that’s supporting his weight, keeping him upright, and, with Steve’s head where it is, he can’t really lean forward. He finally decides that he’d rather touch than see, so he drops backward and reaches out to tangle his fingers in Steve’s hair. Steve gives another of those happy little hums, and Bucky doesn’t even have time to suck in a breath, let alone give a warning, before he loses control. Steve, though, the forever perfect Steve Fucking Rogers, just laps and licks and lets it spray over his lips and drip down his chin. He clearly saves some, swallowing hard a couple of times, before he lets Bucky slide, wet and slick, from his lips. He kisses the inside of Bucky’s thigh, and heaves a contented sigh.

“C’mere.” Bucky pats the bed beside his hip. Steve is too far away down there, and Bucky can barely breathe, and he needs, absolutely _needs_ Steve close enough to hold. To be held by. Either. Both. He just needs _Steve._

Steve climbs onto the bed and on top of Bucky, shoulders and hips swaying, feline and sexy. Bucky wants to pull him down and kiss him, but his mouth and chin are still slick with Bucky’s release, and he’s not sure how he feels about kissing _that_. Steve gives him a look that clearly says he knows what Bucky’s thinking but he’s fine just not having that argument _right now_. He drags the back of his wrist across his face and then wipes off on a corner of the sheet.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Steve tells him solemnly, and then his lips quirk and that ornery look that Bucky’s never quite forgotten flashes across his eyes. “I like the way you taste.” 

Bucky’s breath snags in his throat. Again. He has a second to wonder if this how tiny Steve used to feet all the time, and then the big, gorgeous reality of big Steve shoots him his brightest grin. He dips down to rub himself against the full length of Bucky’s body, and the sweat-slick slide of his chest makes Bucky’s cock twitch. Bucky had no idea he could bounce back so quickly; and he’s momentarily bewildered to find himself glad for all the experimenting and messing around in his insides. Then Steve moves again, crawling right up over Bucky’s torso, past his head, letting his cock rub right up the side of Bucky’s face on the way by, and Bucky stops thinking about much of anything except how much he wants to get his mouth back on Steve as soon as possible.

“Get yourself together and get up here,” Steve says as he flops down on the bed, shaking the mattress as he rolls over. 

He’s all sprawled out against the pillows, and Bucky rolls over, pushing himself up to just stare for a minute. Steve has one arm thrown up, over his head, and his legs are spread wide. The fingers of his other hand loosely encircle the base of his absolutely _rigid_ cock, all purple and huge. A trail of clear, thick fluid swells out from the tip, trickling slowly down the side of his shaft and over his thumb; Bucky’s mouth waters, watching it, and he swallows hard and tells himself to breathe. 

To Bucky, Steve looks like one of those paintings of Greek and Roman gods that Steve used to drag Bucky to go see. Only he’s warm and breathing and close enough to touch. He’s _beautiful_ , and it absolutely steals Bucky’s breath for the millionth time that night. Bucky scrambles to get to him, awkward without his arm but too determined to slow down. He crashes into Steve’s arms, and they meet in a sloppy, frantic kiss. Bucky’s shaking, and he doesn’t know why, but he can feel Steve trembling against him, too, so he figures it’s probably okay. He can _taste himself_ on Steve’s lips and tongue, and it’s strange and new and intoxicating, and he sucks and licks and decides he can’t get enough of the way the taste of Steve mingles with it.

“I want...I want _more_ ,” Bucky whispers between kisses. He’s not entirely certain what more there is, but he’s feeling twitches of interest from his own body, and Steve’s hard like vibranium, and there has _got_ to be a way to get _something_ into _someone_ and make everyone feel good. “Please, Stevie, I need...I don’t know! I just _need_!”

Steve chokes on a noise like a sob, and pulls Bucky into a hug so hard he can’t breathe. 

“You can... you can, ya know… to me…” Bucky manages to squeeze the words out with the last of his air, and Steve lets go so fast that the air rushing back into Bucky’s lungs makes him light-headed. 

“Buck!” Steve’s gone wide-eyed as he scrambles halfway across the bed. “Buck, no. I...I can’t do that tonight. Not...I’m too...I want to be able to be _careful_ with you. Take my time. Work you up to it. Make it good for you, make you feel so good. Oh, _fuck!_ ”

The curse slipping from Steve’s lips finishes taking Bucky from a little hard to ready to go again. It’s not that Steve never cursed; Bucky’s heard him turn the air around him blue when he’s been worked up enough. It’s that he never imagined being the thing that _got_ Steve so worked up.

“Then how?” he asks, holding his hand out for Steve to take. “Teach me. Show me.”

Steve lets Bucky pull him into another kiss, and they stretch carefully down the bed. The kiss quickly turns hot and wet, and they writhe together, thrusting against each other’s hips and legs and stomachs. Bucky’s so worked up he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop, and he sees a lot of merit in just continuing what they’re doing until they find release. They both gasp when they find a good angle, and they lose several minutes doing just that. Steve stills first, and Bucky manages to get himself under control through Herculean effort. 

“Let me...just let me grab some slick,” Steve whispers against Bucky’s lips. 

He pulls slowly away, walks across the room, and stops in the doorway. He just stares at Bucky, and then his face flushes red, and he ducks his head on his way out into the hall. He’s back in a few minutes holding a small bottle of thick, clear fluid and a string of condoms. Both things get dropped on the bed as Steve scurries back up to kiss Bucky’s face: eyebrows, nose, cheeks, chin, lips. He presses their foreheads together and breathes slowly before he sits up and reaches for the strip of condoms. 

“So far, it appears I can’t catch anything, and I doubt that you could, either, but these make cleanup easier.” 

“I’ll wear an entire rubber suit if it’ll get you on my prick faster.” Bucky’s voice quivers, and he can’t tell if the shaking he feels is from himself or from Steve’s trembling hands shaking the entire bed. “Please, Stevie!”

Steve rips open one little foil packet and rolls the condom on Bucky first, which is a good thing, since he’s _positive_ he’s going to need to not be touched again until he’s inside Steve’s body or he’s not going to get to _do_ anything before he comes again. Next, Steve picks up the bottle of lube and runs some over his own fingers. He holds it out to Bucky, dribbling a thin stream over Bucky’s first two fingers, and helping him to spread it around. It’s cold and tacky, and Bucky rubs it with his thumb, imagining the sleekness of it combining with the heat of Steve’s body. His cock throbs again, bobbing in the air, and he bites the inside of his cheek, _hard_ , to distract himself from the pressure building in his balls.

Bucky holds his breath when Steve reaches behind himself. He can’t take his eyes off of Steve’s face, the way his eyebrows scrunch together and then climb up his forehead. The way his lips pucker and part on a soft pant before they push together and forward again. Bucky wiggles slightly lower down the bed until he can reach around Steve’s thigh and touch his own fingers tentatively to where Steve’s are buried deep inside himself, spreading the slick around inside and out. Steve opens his eyes and smiles, hot and tight, and shifts his hand to let Bucky slide a finger in beside his own.

 _I’m going to die in there_ , Bucky thinks. He bites his lip and tries to keep his breathing steady. Steve’s hot inside, so _incredibly_ hot, and Bucky pulls gently against his rim to try to determine how tight it’ll be. Steve moans and arches his back, his own hand falling away from himself as he braces with both hands on Bucky’s chest.

“Fuck it,” Steve hisses. He reaches between his legs to steady Bucky’s cock, and then Bucky barely has time to get his hand out of the way as Steve begins to slide down onto him. 

Seven and a half decades and a million lost memories since the last time Bucky was _really_ inside another person, and yet his body hasn’t forgotten. His hips lift, slow and steady, to meet Steve’s descent, and they they both gasp as Bucky slides in all the way. He grabs Steve’s thigh, fingers digging in hard, and Steve shifts his hands enough to press his thumbs right on Bucky’s nipples. The sensation is like being electrocuted (Bucky would know), but in a damn _good_ way as the current connects from his balls to his nipples to his cock and back. 

He sinks back to the bed and then lifts again, and Steve rocks with him, and, just like that, they’re moving together. It’s as easy as anything has ever been between them; just Bucky and Steve, Steve and Bucky. Bodies and breath and minds in tandem. It’s slick and hot, the rock and sway, grind and press, lift and relax as natural as breathing. The blue of Steve’s eyes is so dark, nearly devoured by the pupils, and Bucky wants to kiss him. He lifts his head, and Steve turns the next thrust into a smooth dip to press their mouths together. 

They let their lips brush as they keep moving, the new angle keeping Bucky’s thrusts shallower, but, if the way Steve starts making tiny sounds on every push is anything to go by, it’s even better for him. Bucky briefly wishes Steve was on his knees, wishes he was behind Steve so he could _see_ the place where they’re joined. To see himself buried inside a man. And enjoying the _hell_ out of it. He thinks he wants to do this again. Before the war, Steve was there for Bucky’s every moment; it’s only fitting that he’s here for this new experience in Bucky’s life. Bucky nearly closes his eyes to bask in the sensations, but he can’t bring himself to look away from Steve’s flushed face and lust-darkened eyes.

Steve kisses Bucky hard and arches his back enough to get a hand beneath himself. As soon as his lips slide away from Bucky’s, Bucky looks down to see what he’s doing. What he’s _doing_ is jerking himself in long, smooth strokes to match the motion of Bucky’s cock inside him. It’s a far sexier sight than Bucky could ever have imagined it would be, and he catches his breath, rhythm stuttering for a moment. Steve gives him another of those intense looks, and his shoulder speeds up. Bucky scrapes his nails into Steve’s back, trying to hold him close as he fucks harder, heels planted hard into the mattress to give himself enough force. He’s so close he’s grunting with every thrust, and he wishes he could say something. Anything. 

“Hang on, hang on!” Steve sits up, back arching, chest and stomach muscles twitching. “Fuck, gonna be over too fast if we...I need to shift some.”

Bucky tries not to cry when Steve slides off of him, but then Steve makes a tiny, sad sound of loss, and Bucky goes from bereft to smug in an instant. He sits up and reaches for Steve, kissing him, still marveling that the taste of himself on Steve’s lips. 

“How do you want me, Stevie?” He can barely whisper, his throat is so raw and thick. 

“Just lie there a minute.” Steve pushes Bucky back to the bed and stands up, stretching, his whole body tensing in a long, sleek line of muscle, and Bucky groans. He may have never really wanted men before, but he wants this one so badly his vision is going fuzzy. 

“Come back,” he says, holding his hand up for Steve to take. “Please, Steve, I...I need…” _you_. Another sentence he can’t finish. Not yet. He needs a little time to get used to the idea, and then he’ll spill all the pretty words he ever learned to say by rote to women. This time though, he’s a little afraid he’ll mean them. 

Steve climbs onto the bed, facing Bucky’s feet. He swings his leg over Bucky’s hips and sits down and back, and Bucky _loses what’s left of his damn mind._

The red, puffy circle of Steve’s entrance pushes against the tip of the condom, pulls in on itself, and then opens slowly. Bucky watches himself vanish– millimeter by millimeter– inside Steve’s body. He can’t breathe normally, puffing out shallow breaths and sucking in tiny breaths of air in shaky gasps. It’s familiar, bringing back memories of pushing into other bodies. Women’s bodies. Bucky always did like to watch. It’s bizarre and new, since he never before thought about having sex _in there._ It’s like walking into a whole new world and like stepping through the door of his own home, and it’s terrifying and comforting all at once. 

Most of all, though, it’s _Steve_ , and Bucky reaches out to stroke his thumb around the swollen skin, feeling the place where he and Steve are, literally and physically, more connected than they ever have been. 

Steve starts to move again, thighs and ass and back flexing as he pushes himself up and then sinks back down. Bucky tries to touch everything he can, but he can’t reach much. Without giving it much thought, he reaches up and grabs Steve’s shoulder, yanking. Steve shouts– actually _shouts_ – a wordless cry of pleasure and lets himself flop back onto Bucky’s chest. He somehow gets his legs untucked, and Bucky grabs one of Steve’s thighs, spreading his legs wide. He holds Steve’s leg in place, bracing it with his own knee, and begins to thrust, hips snapping up hard. Steve cries out again, arms flailing wide, and Bucky grabs him across his chest and holds on. Steve sets a hard, circular grind with his hips every time Bucky slams home, and it’s so good, so perfect. 

Bucky finds Steve’s nipple with his fingers, and he flicks it with his nail then grabs hold and pinches _hard_. Steve tosses his head, hair sticking to the sweat on Bucky’s face, getting in Bucky’s mouth, and he groans again, reaching down to start jerking himself again. Bucky cranes his neck, looking down Steve’s body as much as he can, and then he gives up and bites down on the meat of Steve’s shoulder. Steve shouts again and then he clenches _hard_ around Bucky’s cock. He falls silent when he loses control, spraying hot pulses up his own chest and all over Bucky’s arm. 

Bucky can just see the side of his face, see the way Steve’s eyes drop shut, the way his lips fall open on a soft, whisper of _Buck!_ The rhythmic clenching of him, the sight of his flushed face, watching the way he goes from beautiful to radiant in bliss: it all builds up in Bucky’s belly and his balls, and he thrusts up hard, pushing himself as deeply into Steve as he can go as he releases inside the rubber.

Steve immediately goes limp across Bucky’s chest, and Bucky kisses his hair and holds on hard. He can’t form coherent thoughts in that calm space immediately after an excellent orgasm, but it doesn’t bother him. Instead, he’s just grateful for the quiet and the chance to actually see Steve _still_ for a change. It was rare enough when they were children and absolutely unheard of after the serum. He hugs Steve, strokes his chest and arm and stomach, keeps himself from murmuring soft words or making any promises he doesn’t think he could mean. Not now. Not yet.

He still can’t seem to touch enough of Steve at once, in spite of how closely together they’re pressed. In spite of the way he’s still buried as deep inside Steve as he can get. Steve shifts his hips, and Bucky hisses, over-sensitive and flayed raw with sensation. In spite of it all being too much, trying to tip his nerves from pleasure to pain, he whines when Steve rolls to the side, releasing Bucky’s quickly softening cock. Steve doesn’t go far, though, just tucks himself along Bucky’s side and kisses his chin. He’s slow and sloppy, and Bucky feels another wave of warmth well up inside him. He kisses Steve’s eyebrow and smiles at him.

“So does that really feel as good as you made it look like it did?” Bucky's curious, sure. He's always assumed it'd be strange, uncomfortable, maybe even painful, to have something put...there. Steve, though, he'd looked like he'd found Heaven on Earth sitting on Bucky's prick, maybe there is something Bucky’s been missing out on.

Steve chuckles, a soft rumble of sound from deep in the pile of relaxed muscle that he's turned into. He lifts his head, blue eyes hazy and soft, hair standing out all over, cheeks still pink. Bucky suddenly wishes he'd gotten even a quarter of Steve's artistic talents so he could capture this look in pencil or paint. He tries to write it into his brain, burn it on his eyes, so that he can pull it up whenever he wants. Surely _that_ face can drown out any nightmare.

“When the angle's just right,” Steve closes his eyes and looks dreamy, “it's better’n getting sucked.”

“Oh.” Bucky's not certain that's possible, thinking of how it felt to have Steve’s pink lips wrapped around him such a short time before. _Steve_ seems to believe what he’s saying, though. Bucky strokes his fingers down Steve’s back and says, as steadily as he can manage. “So maybe I, uh...I mean, you could...maybe we could do it the other way sometime.”

Steve opens his eyes, gaze instantly sharp.He shifts to where he can see Bucky’s face without straining his neck and studies Bucky's face intently for a minute. The tension in his jaw relaxes again, and he smiles, eyes bright and damp and earnest. 

“I'd love that,” he says, offering it up like it's a simple truth. And maybe it is just that easy. They can make one another feel good, trying to make up for some of the horror they’ve both experienced. Just another facet of how they’ve always taken care of each other. How they’ve always hung together, even when Bucky didn’t really _remember_ why those bright blue eyes made him ache and long and wonder what the word “home” meant.

He kisses Steve again, just because it feels like the right thing to do. Steve sighs against his lips, and then he rolls further onto his side, pulling Bucky snugly against his chest. They continue kissing for several long, quiet minutes, trading soft nips and flicks of tongue, but Steve pulls back eventually and starts to sit up. Bucky huffs in protest and tries to hold on, but Steve just gathers up his hand and kisses the backs of his fingers. 

“Just gonna get something to clean up.” He promises, face serious and eyes intent, “I'll be right back.”

When he returns a few minutes late, he carefully removes Bucky's condom, and then sets about wiping him clean with a warm rag. Bucky touches Steve's face every time it's close enough. He's not sure when he last felt so cared for, and it makes the lonely ache under his ribs murmur restlessly. He suddenly wants to cry and laugh and tumble Steve back into the bed and kiss every inch of his golden skin in gratitude.

“You think you can sleep?” Steve strokes his fingertips down Bucky's stomach like he's checking for anything he missed, and Bucky catches his hand, drawing it to his lips. Steve smiles at him, but there's some shadow in his eyes that Bucky hopes isn't regret.

“Only if you’re gonna crawl in here with me.” Bucky feels a flutter in his belly, and he swallows down his nerves. Maybe this is too much for Steve. Maybe Bucky shouldn’t have asked about next time. Maybe he’s just reading too much into the pieces of Steve and himself that he’s sure he hasn’t remembered yet.

“Of course I will.” Steve leans down and kisses his cheek. “Lemme go put this in the bathroom.” He holds up the washcloth. 

“Stevie?” Bucky catches Steve’s free hand and pulls himself up to sitting. “What’s wrong?”

Steve looks surprised for a minute and then he smiles wryly and shakes his head.

“Nothing. I swear, Buck.” He pulls his hand free of Bucky’s grip, gently, and reaches up to run his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “Let me get rid of this and then we’ll talk.”

When Steve returns, he slides into the bed on Bucky’s left and gathers him close. He plays with the ends of Bucky’s hair for a moment and then scratches his fingertips gently through his beard.

“It’s still weird, seeing you like this.” Steve tangles his fingers in Bucky’s hair and tugs, just hard enough to feel good, and Bucky nuzzles his shoulder to coax for more. “You were always the tidy one, never a hair out of place, never missing a spot with your razor.” He starts running his fingers through Bucky’s hair, and Bucky can’t help but close his eyes and relax. “I like it, though. Makes you look, I don’t know, dangerous. But cuddly at the same time. Warm, maybe.”

“I know my personal grooming isn’t what you’re worrying about here, Steve.” Bucky doesn’t even bother opening his eyes. He pats Steve’s chest affectionately. “So tell me what’s on your mind.”

Steve takes a deep breath, his chest rising and rising and rising some more under Bucky’s cheek. Bucky starts to snicker when Steve begins to blow out the air; he’s full-on laughing by the time Steve’s chest is halfway down to where it started, and he actually snorts when Steve reaches the end of the breath. He’s pretty sure he will never _not_ find it funny to see his once-wheezy Steve breathing like Captain America. Steve ignores the laughter, but that’s just the same as it’s been for ninety years; Bucky laughs at him, and Steve is too dignified to bother answering.

“I’m afraid I’m using you, Buck.” Steve gets both arms around Bucky, one under his head and the other wrapped just under his good arm. Bucky knows Steve is choosing carefully where to hold, to keep Bucky from feeling trapped. Quite frankly, being wrapped up by Steve just feels _safe_ now, so Bucky pulls his arm in against his chest, letting Steve’s big body surround him. Steve holds harder, reading what Bucky wants the same as he always has. “I just...I’m not usually into...into sex. I mean, the release is great, but mostly I’d just as soon take care of it myself as look for a partner. I haven’t...I haven’t found very many people I’m comfortable with, or interested in or….”

Bucky wants to see Steve’s face, but he suspects that Steve is only saying this much because he’s got some level of hiding going on, since Bucky’s pinned against his chest and can’t see his face. If that’s what Steve needs to talk, then Bucky will give him the space.

“And then you came along, and I...I didn’t want you. I mean, not originally. Not when I saw you before you...not when I first saw you.” Steve’s voice quivers just a little, and Bucky wraps his arm over Steve’s ribs, hoping a hug is enough comfort, because it’s all he’s got to offer. The lump in his throat will barely let him breathe, let alone speak. Steve’s arms flex and relax a bit before he speaks again. “I didn’t think of anything except having you back in my life. Back as my friend. Back as someone...as someone who could really….” 

He trails off, and Bucky nods.

 _Someone who can really understand._

Oh, Bucky understands _that_ all too well.

“And then I saw you in the shower, and I just...I just remembered all those other times. Years ago. Before…”

Before the war and the serum and Peggy. Before Bucky fell and Steve froze and the Winter Soldier came to be. Before they both thawed out and found themselves in a time and place that barely made sense.

“And now?” Bucky has to ask, half-afraid of the answer.

“Now I think you’re right. It’s just sex. Or maybe just us _and_ sex.” Steve heaves another giant sigh. “But it feels good, and it hasn’t left me feeling wrong. And I just don’t...I just don’t want you to think you have to. That I won’t come around if you don’t...if you don’t want to do this again.”

Bucky gently pushes himself free from Steve’s embrace and sits up. He looks down at Steve’s face and sees how raw and open he is, how earnest and too-serious. It’s just the way he’s always been, even before the serum. After that, after Erskine and all Steve went through, he’s just gotten even _more_ that way. 

“You’re overthinking this, Steve.” He brushes his palm over Steve’s hair, trying to make it lie down. It doesn’t work, so he fluffs it with his fingers instead and then presses his thumb against the pout of Steve’s pretty bottom lip. “Here’s how I see it, okay? I haven’t had anyone in decades. Not really. And I _miss_ sex. The thought of tryin’ to get cozy with a stranger gives me the heebie-jeebies. But I trust you. I trust you to touch me and not hurt me. I trust me to be able to...to take you getting excited. So, for now, this is going to work just fine. So long as you don’t spend too much time here and get us both caught.”

Steve nods solemnly, and Bucky snorts at him. 

“You’re _way_ too serious about sex, punk.” He ruffles Steve’s hair up even more and then turns to flip off the lamp beside the bed. “Now shut your mouth and go to sleep.” He snuggles back into Steve’s arms, pleased to find that Steve’s body is again loose and easy against the mattress. 

Steve takes a breath like he’s about to say something else, and Bucky reaches up to clap a hand over his mouth.

“No. That was more than enough talk for the night. Sweet dreams, Stevie.”

“G’night, Buck.” Steve kisses the top of his head, and they slowly sync their breathing and drop into dreams.

*****

Bucky wakes first the next morning. He doesn’t remember any nightmares, and he hopes that maybe it means he didn’t have any for a change. The morning sunlight filters in through the curtains, bathing Steve’s bare back and shoulders in pale white light. He looks like he’s glowing, and Bucky props himself up on a couple of pillows to watch Steve sleep. It’s a thing he used to do, back when Steve was just Stevie and Bucky would wake up every time he stopped snoring. He’d turn on a lamp to watch the rise and fall of Steve’s ribs, grateful for every breath that happened. He’d hold his own breath when Steve missed a breath or two, wondering if he could force himself to stop breathing forever should Steve never take another breath. A world without his best friend wasn’t a world Bucky wanted to live in. 

He’d been so angry when he’d gotten called up, knowing he’d have to leave Steve behind. Knowing he might not ever go home. His only solace had been knowing, beyond all doubt, that Steve would be safe in New York. As Bucky had endured on that table in Italy, a prisoner of war and hoping he’d be dead soon, he’d reminded himself over and over that Steve was safe. Steve would go on and finish his life, an ocean away from the bullets and the stink of war. He’d tried so _hard_ not to lose himself in a fantasy of Steve appearing like magic and whisking him away. And then Steve had. 

It was a bittersweet moment, seeing Steve there. He was big. Strong. Healthy. Handsome as hell. But he was in the last place Bucky had ever _wanted_ to see him. Idiot. He’d pushed too hard, gotten what he wanted, and ended up smack in a fight too big for him to handle. As always. Bucky never expected to outlast the war, but he’d tried like hell. _Someone_ needed to watch Steve’s back.

Now, decades past the bullets and the stench, safe in the bosom of a nearly hidden kingdom, Bucky can just watch Steve sleep. He’s big and strong and healthier than anyone else in the world, and Bucky _still_ thanks a power he’s not sure he believes in anymore for every inhale, every exhale. Every sign that Steve is still with him. 

Steve’s lashes flutter against his cheeks, and his eyebrows draw together. His lips purse forward as he shuffles restlessly against the sheets. Bucky smooths his hand over Steve’s hair, and Steve heaves a big sigh, rolls to his side and reaches out to wrap his hand around Bucky’s bicep. He doesn’t wake, though, and Bucky feels himself smile, all big and stupid and probably too happy.

There’s never been anyone Bucky has loved as much as he loves Steve. Maybe his mama. Maybe his father, way back when. Maybe Steve’s mama; Sarah was truly another parent to Bucky, and he felt the loss of her painfully. When his own mother died the following year, he’d clung to Steve, the only thing left in his world. Now, more than seven decades later, Steve is again the only person left to Bucky. He wonders if he’d feel this way about any of his other friends, any of the other Commandos. He’s pretty sure that, while he’d be happy to have _anyone_ from his past, he’d rather have Steve than the rest of them put together. He’s absolutely certain that he wouldn’t want anyone else in his bed. And he’s damned _positive_ that he wouldn’t be thinking of letting any of them in his body. 

Maybe he’s gone from _loving Steve_ to being _in love with Steve_ , but he doesn’t really think so. Isn’t even sure what that would mean. Doesn’t matter, anyway, because Steve is here and Bucky’s here, and that’s enough, no matter what comes next. 

He _does_ hope that Steve doesn’t decide to start showing up like weekly or something. For all that he adores Steve, he also still finds Steve’s brand of intensity _exhausting_. He always did, but now he’s got fewer resources left to deal with it. Even if Bucky didn’t feel the need to be sedated to keep himself and others safe, he doesn’t think he’d want to _live_ with Steve. Not now. Not yet. 

The _yet_ kinda blindsides Bucky, and he gives himself some time to really think about it. He pictures himself without words that can trigger blind obedience and violence in him, with a new vibranium arm that doesn’t throw his spine out of line. With his head mostly clear and his dreams more peaceful. He puts all of that into a new place in Brooklyn, with Steve sleeping beside him, just the way he is right then. 

_Maybe_.

So many what-ifs before that could ever happen. So many things that would have to be fixed first, not the least of which is Steve and his friends being fugitives for Bucky’s sake. That’s a burden he’s not sure he can shoulder, and it’s an imbalance that would have to be corrected before he could ever hope to have a…a...a _relationship_ with Steve. Not that he wants that. 

Not that he _doesn’t_ , either, though. 

Bucky sits up and kisses Steve’s cheek gently, and Steve cringes away when Bucky’s whiskers tickle his jaw. He thinks he might know what to do about that, so he rolls out of bed and carefully tucks the blanket around Steve’s shoulder before he leaves the bedroom. He’s in need of a shower and a few of Steve’s personal care items and coffee, and then he’ll wake Steve up and they can have a little talk. Well, Bucky’s going to have a talk. And Steve’s going to listen. Like it or not. 

He heads to the bathroom, snickering as he finds himself planning his morning like a mission. Winter Soldier or no, Bucky himself was a soldier for too long _not_ to take the strategic view of things. He just hopes he’s got a bead on his target for the morning. If he’s right….

He hurries through his new and improved morning routine in hopes of getting some breakfast cooked before Steve wakes up.

Steve comes out of the bedroom when Bucky is halfway through cooking eggs. The appliances are a little different than he’s used to, but he’s always been handy with gadgets, so he’s managed to create something resembling breakfast. The cup of coffee to the right of the stove is black and thick, just the way he’s always preferred it. If Steve doesn’t like it, he can make his own pot. After Bucky’s done with the current one, anyway. 

He doesn’t turn when Steve comes into the room, but Steve gives a happy little hum, and Bucky smiles down at the pan. Steve presses slowly up against his back, giving him time to pull away if he wants. He doesn’t want. Especially once he figures out that Steve, too, is shirtless. The press of hot, bare chest against his warm, bare back is absolutely _heavenly_ , and Bucky leans back some more.

“Holy shit.” Steve breathes out the curse with the reverence of a prayer, and Bucky grins wider, still not turning his head. “Goddamn, Buck. You look...you look like _you_.”

It’d been harder to master shaving one-handed than Bucky had expected it to be, but, thank serum, the nicks and cuts stopped bleeding and sealed up quickly. Steve noses the back edge of Bucky’s jaw and then reaches up to run his fingers over the smoothness of his cheeks. He’d contemplated cutting his hair, but decided that he likes it long. He wishes he could pull it up or back, but he can’t figure out how to operate a rubber band _and_ his hair without both hands, so he just smoothed it back to let it dry. Steve stops touching Bucky’s face long enough to comb his fingers through Bucky’s shaggy mane a couple times. If the murmured praise and soft kisses against his neck are anything to go by, Steve likes the new look.

Bucky finally cranes his neck enough to kiss the corner of Steve’s mouth, and Steve turns Bucky in his arms to _really_ kiss him. Bucky lets him, just for a minute, holding the spatula wide and kissing back slow and warm and happy. Steve tastes like toothpaste, minty and fresh, and Bucky wishes he had another arm to hold Steve close. He finally pulls slowly away and turns back to the stovetop.

“If you don’t want your eggs burned,” he tells Steve, stirring the yellow mess into fluffy perfection, “then you’ll quit trying to get me goin’ again and go put your ass at the table.”

“So why’d you decide to shave?” Steve backs away reluctantly, but runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair again before he goes to sit down. “I’m not complaining, mind you. I’ve missed that jaw of yours. You are one _very_ handsome man, Bucky. But then, you always have been. Most handsome I’ve ever seen, anyway.”

Bucky opens his mouth to answer, but he feels his face heating, and he just can’t think of anything to say. He licks his lips and then decides to answer Steve’s question and leave the rest for another time.

“Just figured that, being here, with T’Challa and his people watching over me, spending most of my time frozen,” he shrugs, the movement awkward when the metal remnant of his shoulder doesn’t shift as smoothly as his flesh and bone side, “and when you’re the only one who’ll see me awake, I don’t have to hide anymore. Don’t have to, ya know, cover up so much.”

He finishes stirring the eggs and dumps them out onto two plates in puffy mounds. He spoons out generous helpings of the fruit he’d cut up and stirred together with a splash of juice while he’d been waiting for the coffee to brew. Maybe it’s a little creepy, but he’d let himself really _feel_ the Soldier, when he’d reached for the knife. He figured that, if anyone could manage to dice something up one-handed, it’d be that berserk bastard. 

Steve thanks him when Bucky sets his plate in front of him. Bucky just pats his shoulder and goes back to pour coffee, one for Steve and a warm-up on his own cup. When he goes back to get his own plate, Steve makes a noise that sounds like a protest, and Bucky turns back to glare at him. Just because it takes him a few more trips to get all the food on the table does _not_ mean that he needs help doing it. He just needs more practice, is all, and Steve can keep his ass in his seat and his mouth _shut_. He tries to put all of that into a look, and, judging by Steve’s hurt-puppy face, he succeeds. 

He drops into the chair to Steve’s left and carefully hooks his sock-covered ankle around Steve’s bare one. In the past, Steve never ran around half-dressed. Looking at him now, wearing nothing but a pair of rather thin pants, Bucky thinks that was a real shame. Steve was small and delicate and so, so fragile, but he was also just as beautiful then, although in a more...a more _ethereal_ way. Maybe if Bucky’d gotten to spend more time looking at Steve’s skin back then, it’d be less of a shock to find out how badly he wants to _now_. 

Steve takes a bite of his eggs and closes his eyes, chewing slowly, and new lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle happily when he swallows and smiles. Those little wrinkles shouldn’t be enough to make Bucky’s prick twitch, but they are. Bucky licks his lips, wondering what Steve would do if he just slid straight under the table and tried to suck him. Steve just keeps eating, having no idea what thoughts are running through Bucky’s head, and Bucky shifts uncomfortably as he starts to get harder. He clears his throat, hard, and tries to focus on eating his own breakfast.

Steve glances over and then stops eating to stare, all worried and so very Captain America. Bucky wonders what’s showing on his face, and he tries to smile, tries to put it all away and hide it. From the way Steve gives him a genuine frown, all Bucky managed to do was look pained. He drops his fork onto his plate and reaches out to touch Steve’s smooth cheek. His skin is soft and cool under Bucky’s fingertips, and he rubs lightly all the way to the tender place under Steve’s ear.

“Just thinking about going back into the pod in a little bit,” Bucky tells him, but that only makes Steve look sadder and more worried. He hurries on, trying to correct himself, explain better. “I mean, I’m not thinking about _that_ , exactly, the going back in. Mostly I’m thinking about what I want to do before I go.”

“I see,” Steve answers slowly, clearly not seeing much of anything. He’s gone from worried to lost, and Bucky just grunts at him, rolling his eyes.

“I’m thinking about what _we_ can do before I go.” He tries to give Steve a pointed look, letting the side of his mouth curl up into the smile that always got him girls before.

Steve still looks confused and maybe a little hurt, and Bucky starts to laugh at him. He can’t help himself; Steve just takes everything so _seriously_ sometimes. Blames himself for things he can’t possibly help, worries over stupid things that’re so small no one _else_ would even notice it. He’s always had trouble relaxing, having fun, and the serum just made it worse. Bucky can’t stop laughing, and Steve is starting to look a little sheepish, obviously realizing that he’s missed something.

Bucky takes a deep breath to calm himself down, and then he thinks back to before the war, when he found someone he really wanted to take for a dance or a soda. He shoots his best come-hither look. If the darkening of Steve’s eyes and the hitch in his breath are anything to go by, he nails his target.

“Just exactly what do you want to do?” Steve’s voice has gone a touch rougher, a bit deeper, and Bucky licks his lips. 

“I’m thinking I’d like to try to suck you off,” Bucky tells him, trying to say it blandly, matter-of-fact. Even to himself, he mostly just sounds aroused and hungry.

“I think...I think we could try that.” Steve clears his throat and takes a deep swallow of his coffee. He watches Bucky over the rim of his mug with hot eyes. “I mean, if it’s something you’d like to _experiment_ with, I can be your test subject. I hear I’m good at that.”

Bucky laughs again, but it’s rough and dirty now instead of amused, and Steve shovels another bite into his mouth. 

“Nee’ mah strenph,” he says, mouth full and barely understandable. He’s not wrong though; if Bucky gets his way, Steve _will_ need his strength.

Bucky shakes his head fondly leans over to pinch Steve’s nipple– hard– before reaching for his own fork again. Steve gasps and chokes at the tweak, and he shoots Bucky a glare that threatens retribution. Bucky can’t wait, so he just gives Steve a bright grin and goes back to devouring his own food as quickly as he can.

 

Twenty minutes later, Bucky is kneeling on the floor in front of where Steve sits on the couch. They’re both naked, and Bucky is starting to think he’s in over his head. Or...something like that. Trying to suck Steve to orgasm _sounds_ good in his head, but now that he’s confronted by the actual enormous, purple, quivering reality of Steve’s supercock, he’s not sure how to begin. He wraps his hand around it and tentatively licks over the head just the way Steve had done to him the night before, tongue broad and flat. Steve’s breath catches in a tiny hiccup, so Bucky does it again. 

He starts feeling braver after a few more licks and a few more interesting sounds from Steve’s throat. He spreads his lips and takes the tip into his mouth, and Steve’s hips flex hard, coming up off the couch the merest inch. That little thrust forward is enough to make Bucky think he’s about to choke, and he jerks his head back and away. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Steve sinks back down into the cushion, and now he’s holding himself too rigidly, clearly planning on _forcing_ himself not to move. 

Bucky takes that as a challenge, and he never could back down from a dare. 

He sinks back on his heels and studies things for a moment, and then he looks up to see Steve watching him with an expression halfway between aroused and worried. Trust Steve to look worried about the possibility of someone sucking his cock. Bucky laughs at him, shaking his head, and then he decides to just go for it.

The sound Steve makes when Bucky stuffs his mouth as far down as he can get it is excruciatingly beautiful, making Bucky’s own cock twitch and drool. Bucky sucks hard and moves his jaw and tongue, getting a feeling for the heat and heft, and then he cups Steve’s balls in his fingers, stroking and giving the softest of pulls. Steve’s head drops back against the back of the couch with a thump, and Bucky chuckles. He gives another good suck and pulls back a bit, then moans as he tilts forward, getting another inch between his lips. He keeps testing angles and suction, pressure and movement with his tongue until he gets a sign that he’s gotten it _just right_.

Steven Grant Rogers, with his perfect choir boy looks and his towering reputation, lets loose the most _incredible_ string of profane blasphemy Bucky has ever heard him use. That’s genuinely saying something, since Bucky faced bullets, weird ray guns, Nazis, and HYDRA by Steve’s side. 

Both of Steve’s hands land hard on Bucky’s head, grabbing at his hair restlessly, pulling, fingers tightening and going limp by turns. Bucky shoves his hand further under Steve’s ass, hunting for the wrinkled ring of his entrance, humming happily when he manages to catch it with his trigger callus and Steve hisses out a few more profanities, including a few words Bucky’s actually never heard before. He tries to make a mental note to ask about them later, but he forgets it quickly as he finds a good rhythm with his tongue and his lips and his jaw and his neck. 

Steve writhes all over the couch as his control follows his composure in running away. Bucky’s pretty sure that it’s not the most skillful blowjob Steve has ever received, but he’s damn sure going to make it the most enthusiastic. Steve seems to have lost the ability to move most of his limbs in any intentional way, and Bucky hums happily. 

“ _Shit, Buck!_ ” Steve can’t keep himself still, rocking slightly forward to meet Bucky’s movement on every bob of his head. “Goddamn, fucking yes. So fucking perfect, fuck yeah, oh Jesus that’s–” He cuts off on a long, desperate moan.

Bucky is hit with the realization that he’s about to get a mouthful of something and the actual mouthful at the same time. He has a long moment of panic when he realizes he doesn't know what to _do_ with it, and then he gulps and flails, half punching Steve in the dick as he backs away.

Steve clutches himself with both hands and flops sideways on the couch, long legs tangling around Bucky's body. He's laughing and panting and holding himself, and Bucky wants to apologize and wants to jerk himself off and wants to go hide in the bathroom from humiliation all at once. And Steve, bastard that he is, just lies there laughing until tears squeeze out of his eyes. He reaches out to catch Bucky’s face with one hand and pulls him forward until he can kiss him, mostly like he’s trying to stifle himself. They can’t kiss for long, because Steve ends up flopping back down and laughing some more. He gets to the point of wheezing before he manages to get himself together enough to speak.

“I’ve heard of happy endings before,” he gasps out between giggles that Captain America ought to be ashamed of making, “but that finishing move was _entirely_ unique. Oh, God, Bucky! I’m not gonna forget this one anytime soon.”

Bucky’s mortification feels like it may never fade, but his erection isn’t fading, either, so he stands up and kneels one leg across both of Steve’s thighs. Maybe he’s going to die of embarrassment, but he’s not going to die unsatisfied. He wraps his fingers around himself and starts stroking hard and fast. He’s glaring at Steve, and Steve’s laughter dies on another choked breath. He stares up at Bucky, his eyes going wide and dark, and then he starts talking, and Bucky wonders where the _hell_ he learned to say the things that spill out of his mouth. 

“Yeah, show me how you like it,” Steve says, low and rough. His gaze flickers from Bucky’s face to his hand and back. “Touch yourself, Bucky. Think about yesterday when you were inside me. Think about how it felt to have me riding your prick, fucking myself on you. There’s this place inside– all men have it– that being touched feels like fire and electricity and every good thing that’s ever happened to you, all at once. Next time, Buck, next time I’ll reach right up in you, find that place for you, show you how good it can be. Oh, shit, look how wet you are for me. Look at the way you drip. Come on, spray it on me. Get it all over me, Buck. Make me dirty. Make me yours.”

And Bucky, Goddamn! In spite of whatever was done to him, he’s only human. He lets go with a shout like he hasn’t heard from himself in...maybe ever. His eyes roll up, and he just keeps fucking his fist and then, in the hollow place as he’s just about done, Steve sits up and touches him. He just puts his hands on Bucky’s body, nowhere special, just one on his chest and one on his thigh, and he breathes Bucky’s name reverently, and Bucky feels another tendril of pleasure spiral up his spine and down through his belly, and he cries out again. 

As soon as it’s over, he starts to collapse, and Steve catches him, pulling him in and lying down, chest and arms and legs supporting all of Bucky’s weight. He rests his head on Steve’s broad shoulder and closes his eyes, suddenly feeling nothing but the soft white fuzz of the end of his satisfaction.

They clean up with another lazy shower, and Bucky’s starting to think he might actually be reaching the limit of his ability to enjoy hot water. He never thought he’d see the day, but he also never thought he’d want to have sex with a man. He _really_ never thought of Steve and sex in the same sentence in any way that didn’t involve him wondering if Steve would ever learn to control his smart mouth enough to have some. Turns out that Steve didn’t need to control his mouth so much as aim it at the right person. People. Peggy certainly counted in that category, too.

He remembers Peggy’s lovely smile and snapping eyes, and the way she looked at Steve like he hung the moon. Bucky kinda thinks that maybe he should have taken more time to get to know her; if they both fit into the _Steve’s Type_ box, maybe they’d have had more in common than he would have believed at the time. Dark hair, blue eyes, the overwhelming desire to go stomping into some mess Steve made and cause a little havoc of their own. _Okay._ He should have guessed how much alike they were. 

He kisses the back of Steve’s neck while they're in the shower and wonders if he should have seen this coming. Oh well, hindsight and perfect vision and all that bull.

Steve orders another hot lunch for them, and then they go to bed again, and not for sleeping. It’s slow and lazy, and more tender than anything Bucky’s ever experienced before. Steve figures out how to prop Bucky’s back with pillows so they can lie on their sides, facing one another. Bucky loves it, because it gives him some control _and_ he has his hand free to touch every piece of Steve he can reach. _God_ , he’s missed touching and being touched. Steve cracks a little, right at the beginning, and tells Bucky how much he hates it when Bucky’s on ice, how close it is to his own nightmares. Bucky kisses him and holds him and promises that it’s not so bad, how time doesn’t pass while he’s under. 

“I saw your face, then I closed my eyes,” Bucky whispers as he slowly presses into Steve’s warm, welcoming body. “The next thing I knew was T’Challa telling me you were here. That you needed me.” They both sigh and rock gently together. “It’s okay, Steve. Keeps me safe. Keeps everyone safe from me. And _you_ –” he punctuates the word with a firmer snap of his hips– “know exactly where to find me.”

Steve’s face goes soft, his worry fading, replaced with a look of acceptance and he smiles, crooked and perfect. Bucky kisses him again, mostly to keep them from having to talk anymore. After that, it’s all gentle movement and soft sounds until Bucky gets impatient and uses his legs and shoulders to lever Steve onto his back. He braces his hand on the mattress beside Steve’s head and puts as much force as he can muster into trying to fuck Steve into turning off his ridiculously overactive personal guilt manufacturing station. He suspects Steve keeps it stored in the same place as his temple to Truth, Honor, and the American Ideal. 

_Punk_ , he thinks fondly, kissing Steve stupid again. He shuts his own brain off after that and loses himself in the act rather than the emotions.

Afterward. Long afterward, Bucky cleans himself off for the last time while Steve finds different clothing for Bucky to wear. Sentimental fool is obviously still worrying about Bucky getting _cold_ , because he’s added a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of heavy sweatpants, and the hoodie that Bucky’s been wearing off and on (more off than on) over the past day. Bucky pulls on a pair of heavy wool socks, and his boots, and shakes his head at Steve’s sad-puppy eyes.

“Rogers,” he says, grabbing the back of Steve’s neck and pulling him close enough to kiss on the nose. He lets their foreheads rest together and just stares for a few long minutes. Steve stares right back, and it’s _still_ not weird between them. They fall into a long, lazy kiss, until Steve finally breaks away, panting hard.

“I really do have a ride to catch out of here,” he says, eyes closed now. He has both arms around Bucky, clinging to the back of his jacket. “And if I don’t go _right now_ , I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get out of here.”

“Go on, Steve.” Bucky kisses him hard and fast, still amazed that this is a thing they now do. “And don’t spend all your time on my dumb crap. You need to deal with your own mess, too, you know. And the rest of the Avengers who went skipping along after you. If you see Sam…” Bucky is still telling himself that he is _not_ wondering if Sam is one of the people Steve has been with. “If you see Sam, tell him I said hey. And that I’m riding up front next time.”

Steve laughs and takes Bucky’s hand. He’s all packed up to go, and he lifts both of his duffle bags with one hand. They walk all the way back to Bucky’s pod with their fingers linked, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever spent so long holding a _girl’s_ hand, but he appreciates that this is a special case; Steve needs to know that Bucky is okay about being frozen again, and Bucky needs to know that Steve will come back. In one piece. And not get himself killed doing something stupid.

He thinks about that on the walk, and then, as he’s waiting for the IV to start running in nutrients before he climbs in, he grabs Steve’s face in his hand, squeezing a bit harder than necessary.

“And Steve, please _try_ not to get yourself in any more trouble.” He laughs, a short, sharp huff of air and kisses Steve’s lips firmly. “At least not until I get a new arm, get rid of my trigger, and can watch your back. Promise me.”

“I can’t promise that,” Steve says, sounding sad. “You _know_ there are things that are more important than staying safe.”

It’s exactly what Bucky needs to hear– Steve sounding like Steve– and he laughs all the way through the IV and climbing into the pod. He blows Steve a kiss through the glass and then settles back, closes his eyes, and lets himself relax. He can feel himself still smiling, and he’s glad that _this_ is the face Steve’ll see if he comes back to check on Bucky without waking him up.

Bucky’s clean and fed, filled to the top with touch and warmth. He’s happier than he’s been in decades, and he’s got his best friend and his own face back. This sleep is going to be a good one. 

“See you in a blink,” he mouths, knowing that Steve’s still watching, and then the cool darkness of cryosleep takes over, and he knows nothing until the next time the door opens.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little one-shot, I said. Maybe about 5000 words, I said. Something I could draft in an evening, just to make me feel better. Bucky needs some warmth and comfort, good food, a hot shower, and a real nap, I said. I doubt it'll even get to a T rating, I said.
> 
> Thirty thousand words, some seriously graphic sex, and a _lot_ of orgasms later, and here we are. 
> 
> Whoops.
> 
> Honestly, I'm not even sorry.
> 
> Come hang out on [tumblr](http://faeleverte.tumblr.com) with me. And then go offer your thanks to my wonderful beta and constant cheerleader in writing and life, [mrspoptop](http://mrspoptop.tumblr.com), without whom this would be riddled with many, many (more) spelling errors and words forgotten in the rush to write and edit.


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